


Mind the Gap

by Mhalachai



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Animators Inc., Crossover, It Must Be Tuesday, Multi, Slayers in St. Louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-29
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-17 10:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 90,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1383532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mhalachai/pseuds/Mhalachai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking a gap year from her college degree, Dawn runs out of money while visiting her aunt in St. Louis. Funny how the only place that's hiring is the local zombie shop...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First published in 2004/5. Post series of BtVS; set around _Incubus Dreams_ for AB.

Dawn Summers adjusted a pencil on her desk, then squared the note pad by the phone. The desk, her desk, now completely in order, she let herself lean back in her chair and folded her hands on the desk. The butterflies in her stomach were still flying in formation, she thought.

She had really lucked out with this job, she reflected as she looked around the pale yellow reception area. She had taken a year off from university to travel, meet family she hadn't seen in a while. Or ever. She was in Saint Louis visiting her mother's sister Karen, when Buffy had put out a frantic call for money. Seemed Willow needed some expensive do-hicky to save the world. With Anya dead, the Scoobies had no real connections to the do-hicky dealer, so they needed to go through someone who jacked up the price.

At any rate, Willow had indeed saved the world. Dawn's bank account (and everybody else's) had been temporarily depleted while Buffy and Giles tried to access one of the Watchers' Council's bank accounts and liquidate some assets so everyone could get repaid.

When Aunt Karen had heard of Dawn's little problem, sanitized of most of the gory apocalyptic details, she suggested that her niece stay in St. Louis for a few more months. Dawn had been hesitant to take up her aunt's hospitality, but as the only other option would have been hitchhiking back to San Francisco, she really had no other choice.

Then one day the phone rang. It was an old friend of Aunt Karen's, Mary, who was a secretary at some company downtown. The friend had called to tell Aunt Karen that she needed to cancel their coffee date the following week, as she had to go out of town for a family emergency. The conversation progressed, and when Aunt Karen hung up, she wheeled on Dawn with a feverish light in her eyes. It was so similar to one of her mom's looks that Dawn cringed. Nothing good ever came of that look.

The next day, Dawn had been sitting in Bert Vaughn's office at Animators Inc. Maybe it had been the thoughts of Anya after the recent expensive apocalypse-prevention, but the blond man in front of her had reminded Dawn very strongly of the late vengeance demon. She figured out later that it was the creepy way he lit up when thinking of money.

"So, Miss Summers, what kinds of experience have you had as a secretary?" Bert had asked.

Dawn had smiled and prepared herself to stretch the truth. "Well, I spent a few summers between my college semesters organizing and filing documentation for a world-wide philanthropic organization. I have good people skills, and take very concise phone messages." The glib responses she had planned in the car were drying up on her, and the set expression on Bert's face told her that she would soon be booted onto the street. Oh well. At least she tried.

Bert had flipped through the pages on his desk, making himself look busy. Dawn narrowed her eyes. He was nervous. "Miss Summers, may I be blunt?"

Dawn had no idea where this was going, so she just nodded.

"I'm sure your skills as secretary will be adequate while Mary is out of town at her son's bedside after his surgery, but our office and our clientele requires a certain... discretion, shall we say?"

Discretion? What kind of discretion would an animation studio need? "In what way?" Dawn asked neutrally.

Bert put his hands on his desk. "Some of our clients don't want it to be general knowledge that they've come in to have one of our animators raise the dead for them. I'm sure you understand."

A thrill ran down Dawn's spine, and it took a second for her to readjust her mind from _animation studio_ to _animators of the dead_. "Of course I understand," Dawn replied. She gave herself a mental pat on the back for keeping her voice calm.

"Good, then," Bert said. He looked relieved. "What would you say for a trial run for a week?"

"Sounds great," Dawn replied, trying not to sound too eager. She buried the _Oh, what have I done?_ thoughts for when she got back to her aunt's place.

And so here she sat, on her very first day as a tax-paying member of the nine-to-five society. At least it was better than Buffy's Doublemeat Palace gig. Everything was ready and set for the day to begin.

* * *

An hour later, Dawn was slumped back in her chair, building a log cabin with pencils. No one had called, no one had come in. Hell, even the boss hadn't shown up. Dawn wondered if the whole thing was some sort of practical joke set up by her aunt. _No,_ Dawn thought, _I doubt she'd be paying me to sit here. If I'm even going to get paid. It's not like I have anything else to do until Buffy refills my bank account._

She cast another longing look at the computer sitting on the other side of her desk. It was tempting to turn the thing on and start surfing the Internet, but Bert struck her as the kind of boss who would track his employees' computer time religiously. She didn't think he'd take boredom as an excuse for her researching demon languages on company time.

There was noise in the hall. Dawn opened the desk drawer and swept away the remains of her pencil-house before straightening in her chair and putting on the welcome-client-and-your-money face she'd seen Anya use.

The office door opened, and a short dark storm blew in. The woman was about as tall as Buffy, with wild curly black hair and an irritated expression on her face. Her royal purple suit had drying blackish splotches over it. Dawn swallowed when she realized that it was probably not paint on the suit, but blood.

The woman made it across the room and was about to go down the hall when she stopped and turned around. All of her attention was now on Dawn. "Who are you?" the woman demanded.

By now, Dawn had figured out who this was. Bert had told her all about the animators at the firm. Everyone had ranked a glowing description except the last. "Anita Blake. She..." Bert had seemed to struggle with a description. "She's short," he had finished lamely.

"I'm Dawn Summers. I'm replacing Mary for the next month until her son's better," Dawn explained, and smiled weakly.

Anita blinked a couple of times. "How'd you get hired so fast?" she asked. A suspicious expression crossed her face. "You're not a relative of Bert's, are you?"

Dawn shook her head, wondering why she was bothering to explain herself to this woman. "My aunt is a friend of Mary's."

The answer seemed to satisfy Anita, for she whirled around and carried on down the hall, out of Dawn's sight.

"Hello bluntness," Dawn muttered under her breath. She jumped when someone chuckled.

"Anita is nothing if not blunt," the young man said. He must have come in just after Anita, Dawn thought. Then she thought, _Wow_. The young man standing in front of the desk was absolutely gorgeous, from his long auburn hair to his impossible lavender eyes to the shy smile on his face. Dawn did her damnedest to avoid sighing appreciatively.

Instead, she said, "It's cool. Blunt is better than not, things move faster that way." _And my god, could I sound any more like a tool?_ Dawn thought in disgust.

The young man didn't seem to notice. "I'm Nathaniel. I'm with Anita." He gestured to the chairs on the other side of the waiting room. "Is it okay if I sit down over there? I need to wait for her."

"Sure, no problem," Dawn said. Curiosity won the battle and she asked, "Why do you need to wait for Ms. Blake?"

Nathaniel shrugged elegantly. How could anyone make a shrug so damn graceful? "She picked me up from work and needed to come get some stuff done before we could go home."

"So you're her boyfriend?" Dawn asked. It figured. She met a nice, amazingly cute guy, and he was taken. Story of her life.

A strange play of emotions passed over Nathaniel's face. "Yes, I'm her boyfriend," he finally said, soft and hesitant.

"Lucky Anita," Dawn said before she thought about it. Then, to hide her embarrassed blush, she said, "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yeah, coffee would be nice," Nathaniel said, jumping up. "Do you want some?"

Dawn had stood as well, and now it was awkward. "No, when I drink coffee I get all crazy and jumpy and I start to ramble, kinda like, well, now. But I've been here for an hour with nothing to do. Sit down, and I'll get you some. Cream and sugar?"

Nathaniel eased back into his chair. "Both, please."

Happy to finally be doing something, and hoping it would stop her from acting like a total moron, Dawn walked down the plush-carpeted hallway to the coffee table. Handsome men didn't usually turn her into a babbling idiot, she thought as she measured out a spoon of sugar into a company coffee mug. True, it was fast approaching her twenty-first birthday and it had been a long time since she'd been in a relationship with anyone, but damn it, her hormones needed to calm down.

She carried the coffee mug back to Nathaniel. "Hope it's okay," Dawn said as she handed the young man the cup.

"I'm sure it'll be perfect," Nathaniel said, and smiled again.

Riiight. Dawn went back to her desk, carefully sweeping her skirt under her knees as she sat. The phone rang and she just stared at it. The butterflies were back.

 _Come on_ , she told herself. _You've faced vampires and demons and gods. Get a grip_. She picked up the phone and said, "Animators Inc., how may I help you?"

* * *

The phone kept ringing, and clients started coming in for appointments. A few of the other animators had come in and introduced themselves, much more politely than Anita. Dawn met Manuel Rodriguez, Charles... she hadn't caught his last name, John Burke, and Jamieson Clarke.

Throughout it all, Nathaniel sat in the waiting room, quietly reading magazines. Only Jamieson had eyed Nathaniel oddly. The rest seemed to either not see him at all, or ignored him completely. He didn't seem to mind.

Around eleven, the calls tapered off and clients stopped coming in. The lull was welcome for the first five minutes, then Dawn got bored again. Really, really bored.

"You're not used to this much inactivity?" Nathaniel asked quietly. He had put his magazine down and was staring at Dawn.

Dawn was more accustomed to him now, and his mere attention didn't send her into a tailspin. "No, not really. Before, it was my degree, or the research, or the hanging out. Plus, not being able to join in all the little online reindeer games makes for a boring day for Dawn."

"What is your degree in?" Nathaniel asked. He sat up in his chair, all bright-eyed and interested.

"Demonology," Dawn said. "Well, demon languages and the like. I'm not so much with the stabbey-stabbey, but more the theoretical and identification."

"That's really neat," Nathaniel said. "Have you ever faced a real demon?"

Dawn had to think about that. Most of what Buffy and company had faced in Sunnydale weren't true demons. Willow classified them as demi-demons, later. Although by some classifications, Glory could have been called a true demon.

"Yeah." Dawn shook her head. "And she brought death and destruction in her wake."

"I know what you mean," Nathaniel said, so softly that Dawn almost couldn't hear his voice over the air conditioning.

"Who'd you lose?"

"Me, almost." Nathaniel pushed his hair back over his shoulder absently.

He looked, suddenly, at the hallway to the animator offices. Anita stood leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest. Dawn hadn't heard her coming.

"You and Dawn having a good talk?" Anita asked. Dawn would have expected malice in the tone, but Anita's voice was mild. Nathaniel nodded, his eyes never leaving Anita's face.

"She's taking a degree in demonology," Nathaniel said.

"Is that so?" Anita turned that dark gaze onto Dawn, and it was now hostile. "So that's why you're here? Thought working with the zombie makers be good for the classes?"

Dawn let out a breath and told herself that pissing off an armed woman (she could see the bulge of the gun under the purple suit) was a really bad idea. "No. I needed a break from the school work. I took a year off and came to visit my aunt when my bank account took a sudden downturn. I'm here because I am, in theory, getting paid. That's all."

Anita pushed her hair back in a gesture remarkably similar to Nathaniel's. "Any particular reason that you needed a year off?"

Dawn shrugged. "Just too much stuff, you know? Most of the students in the program burn out before the end of the last year. Professor Merek suggested that I take a year to save myself a mental meltdown in a bit."

"You're taking classes with Philo Merek?" Anita asked. She pushed herself off the wall and sat down beside Nathaniel. "I attended a lecture with him back years ago. You actually got into his program? I heard that's nearly impossible."

"Don't think it wasn't. I had to get like, ten reference letters and go through five interviews. And my sister nearly exploded when she found out what I wanted to do." Dawn couldn't help gushing; she always did that when talking about her chosen career. As careers went, being a demonologist wasn't too different from what she'd done in Sunnydale.

Anita smiled, a real, honest-to-God smile. "Yeah, family never understands about fighting bad things." The smile faltered slightly, and Anita turned her head toward Nathaniel, who was sitting very quietly. "You did that on purpose."

"What did I do?" Nathaniel asked, face as blank as he could make it.

"You got me talking to Dawn about something I'd think was cool so I'd stop being grumpy."

Nathaniel nodded, his head moving a fraction of an inch. "Yes, I did."

Anita reached over and squeezed his hand. "Thanks."

The smile that blossomed over his face was brilliant, like the sun peeking out from behind clouds. "You're welcome."

Anita smiled back at Nathaniel. It was a shared smile, something couples had, and it made Dawn sigh.

"What?"

"You two are so good together," Dawn replied. "It's nice to see." Tara used to smile at Willow the way Nathaniel was smiling at Anita, like she was his whole world. Funny, for the first time in years, it didn't hurt to think of Tara being happy.

Anita squeezed Nathaniel's hand once more, then stood up. "I need to get going," she told Dawn. "My first appointment isn't until six, right?" Dawn checked the appointment book on her desk and nodded. "Then I'll see you later. I need to go home and get some sleep."

"See you later," Dawn said as Anita and Nathaniel left the waiting room. She stared at the closed door for a minute. There was something about Nathaniel, some reason Anita reminded her of Willow for more than just the Tara-like smile... but Dawn could not put her mental finger on it. Oh well. She would figure it out eventually.

Then the phone rang and Dawn banished such thoughts until after work.

* * *

Dawn sighed and dropped her purse on the couch in the living room. Her aunt came out from the kitchen when she heard the noise.

"So, how was your first day at work?" Karen asked.

Dawn smiled weakly. "Good. Busy. I never knew so many people wanted to raise the dead."

"People seem to want all sorts strange things in this town," Karen said. "Come on, you can tell me all about if while I fix dinner."

"Do you want any help?" Dawn asked as she trailed her aunt into the large kitchen. The counters were clean, but the table was strewn with the morning's newspapers.

"No, they do wonderful things with frozen lasagna these days," Karen said. "So, your first day. Mary never really told me what kinds of things they do down at Animators Inc."

Dawn settled into a chair at the table and proceeded to tell her aunt about some of the clients, and meeting the animators. She left out the portion where she drooled all over Nathaniel like a teenager.

"Mary always made the job seem boring, whenever we talked about it," Karen said as she joined Dawn at the table.

"Yeah, well after a while, it feels like you've seen it all." Dawn fiddled with the papers.

"You know, Dawn," Karen said, her voice telling Dawn that the topic had just been changed. "I never told you I was sorry for not being there for you and Buffy, after Joyce... after your mother died."

"It's okay," Dawn said. "That was right when Barry had his accident." Barry, Dawn's younger cousin, had been in school bus when it was t-boned by a truck on the freeway. He had lived, but his legs had been crushed in the accident. He was still in a wheelchair. "Buffy took real good care of me. Sometimes I wondered how she did it."

"Your sister is just like her mother," Karen said. "Always taking care of others before herself."

 _Don't I know it,_ Dawn thought, but smiled blandly.

The timer on the oven went off, and Aunt Karen went to rescue the lasagna. While she was busy doing battle with her oven, Dawn's other cousin Alice came in. Dawn fought to keep the smile on her face.

Alice was a few months older than Dawn, but she seemed years younger. She was going to college for something... Dawn hadn't worked out the details yet, not after weeks of being in St. Louis. No, Alice was usually pretty vague on the details, because Alice herself was a little bit vague.

Now that bounty of vagueness bounced into a chair. "So, so are we still on for your birthday party on Thursday?" Alice asked.

Dawn fought not to wince visibly. She had accidentally mentioned that her birthday was on Thursday, in Alice's earshot, the previous week. Now Alice was convinced it was her destiny in life to throw Dawn a twenty-first birthday party.

Problem was, Dawn couldn't see any way to get out of it.

"Um, sure," Dawn replied. Alice grinned vacantly and bounced out of the kitchen.

"I expect it won't be that bad." Karen's voice brought Dawn out of her Alice-induced stupor.

Dawn raised her eyebrows.

"Well, it can't be any worse than previous birthdays, can it?" Karen asked.

Dawn considered that. There was Buffy's birthday when the vengeance demon Halfrek had bound everyone to the house. Then there was her birthday where a whole cadre of vampires rushed the house she was staying with Buffy and Willow. Then there was that last birthday when she had had been helping Professor Merek handle a yucky exorcism.

"Probably not," Dawn conceded. "I mean, what could go wrong?"

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

Dawn dragged herself out of bed early the following morning, so early the sun had not even peeked over the horizon. Her plan was to go into work early that morning, take a look at some of the old zombie files, and see if she could do something about the chaos into which the paperwork had descended since Mary left.

However, for mice and for men, plans often go astray.

It was blissfully quiet through her shower and as she got dressed. She slipped into her other office outfit, wondering if she could accessorize to mask the duplication of her clothing. Funny how proper office worker attire had never really been an issue in her demonology classes. "If it can catch on fire or get stained, I don't want to see it," Professor Merek had said on the first day of field work. She had lived by those words for three years.

Now, she was desperate for an easy-to-clean pants suit. Sad. Very sad.

All ready for the day, Dawn tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen. The light was already on, which warned her that her cousin Barry was awake and about.

"Morning," Dawn said, heading for the fridge.

"Hey," Barry replied from the depths of a cereal bowl. "Why are you up so early?"

"Work. Are you going to physio?" Dawn asked as she pulled a container of leftover pizza from the fridge.

"Yup." Barry put his spoon down and folded over a piece of one of the morning newspapers. "Your new job's at Animators Inc., right?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"You haven't heard about the little incident, have you?" Barry made quote marks in the air around the word 'incident'.

Dawn put the slice of cold pizza in her hand back in the container. "What incident?"

In response, Barry turned the paper around so it faced Dawn. She crossed the kitchen to the table. There, in large words on the front page, was the headline, "Zombie Runs Amok".

So much for a quiet morning.

* * *

When Dawn walked into the office, a harassed-looking young man behind the desk looked up, phone in hand.

"Just hold on," he told the person on the other end of the phone. "I'm sorry, but Animators Inc. isn't give any interviews at this time," he told Dawn.

"Huh?" Dawn shut the door behind her. "No, I'm Dawn, I'm the temp while Mary's out of town."

"Oh, thank God," the young man said, casting his eyes skyward. "Can I take a message for Mr. Vaughn?" he said into the phone.

Dawn busied herself with removing her jacket while the young man ended the call.

"I'm Craig, the night secretary," he said, coming around the edge of the desk.

Dawn shook his hand. It was a nice handshake. "How crazy has it been?"

Craig pushed his hair back from his face. "The phone has been ringing off the hook since two in the morning. I can't believe that idiot Jamieson let a zombie loose into a crowd, let alone a crowd that was being recorded by the media."

"The radio mentioned something about the zombie, but no details," Dawn said. "Why was there a television camera?"

"One of the guys who was there is on one of those reality shows where they follow you around everywhere for a few months. The tape was on the news within an hour."

The phone started ringing. Both Dawn and Craig looked at it, then each other. "Do you want me to get it?" Dawn asked.

"Please, I need to get out of here," Craig said. "Bert called a few minutes ago. He'll be here in a bit. Just take messages, don't transfer any calls to any of the animators, and don't answer any questions."

"Are those the orders from the top?" Dawn's hand was already on the phone.

"No, those are the orders from Bert," Craig shot back. Then he tried to smile. "Sorry, it's been a long night. It was nice to meet you."

"You too," said Dawn as she picked up the phone. She barely registered Craig's hurried "good luck" as she said, "Animators Inc., how may I help you?"

* * *

 

Half an hour later, Bert stormed into the office, faintly reminiscent of Anita's entry the previous day, Dawn thought. She had been on the phone straight and she was getting a bit squirrelly.

"Messages?" Bert demanded. Dawn handed him the thick stack of pink note sheets. He cursed as he flipped through them. "How many cancelled appointments?" he asked.

"Just the one," Dawn said, trying to sound ... something. Maybe empathetic for his lost profits.

"Just one." Bert loosened his tie. "It's not even eight o'clock yet and we already have a cancelled appointment. When Jamieson gets here, you send him to my office right away." With that, Bert stomped off down the hall.

Dawn let out the breath she had been holding. So far that morning, most of the phone calls had been from reporters. She wasn't looking forward to the calls from clients she knew were coming. The one man who called in had sounded so apologetic that he was canceling.

The sound of the door to the hallway opening quietly interrupted Dawn's thoughts, and Dawn steeled herself.

It wasn't a reporter. Manny, one of the animators she had met the previous day, walked in. With him was a young man, maybe a year or two older than Dawn, even shorter than Manny.

"Good morning, Ms. Summers," Manny said formally. His expression was grave.

"Good morning, Mr. Rodriguez," Dawn replied in kind. She could tell by the expression on his face that he had heard about the rampaging zombie.

"Hey, how's it going?" the young man asked. "I'm Larry Kirkland." He held out his hand to Dawn.

Ah, the one animator she had not met the day before. "Hi. Dawn Summers." Dawn shook his hand. "I'm temping for Mary."

"I wish we could have met under better circumstances," Larry continued. Manny made a sound in his throat and headed toward the coffee maker. "Has it been bad?"

Assuming he meant the phones, Dawn said, "Lots of reporter calls. One cancelled appointment. Bert ... I mean, Mr. Vaughn, is in his office already."

Larry was nodding slowly. "Is Anita in yet?"

"No, I haven't seen her."

"If there is one person I can avoid seeing today, it is Anita," Manny muttered as he returned.

Larry frowned. "Why?"

"Because she is going to be very angry," Manny said, "And she scares me to death when she is angry."

"Of course she's going to be angry," Larry retorted, crossing his arms over his chest. "Jamison screwed up."

"You do not know that."

"Actually, I do. I talked to Tammy an hour ago." Larry caught Dawn's confused expression. "My wife, Tammy Reynolds, she's a detective on the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team," he explained. "She's not on the case, but she talked to the cops who are, and called me at home." He turned back to Manny. "She said Jamison was pretty wrung out when he showed up at the grave sight. It was his third of the night, and he let it get away from him."

Manny closed his eyes and muttered under his breath in Spanish, then took a swig of coffee. "At least your wife has not taken this opportunity to demand you retire," he said. Dawn sensed she had been forgotten.

"Rosita said that?" Larry seemed surprised.

Manny nodded. "She does not like what I do, says I am getting too old." He smiled, almost to himself. "Maybe she is right."

"No way, man, you're still in the game on this one," Larry protested. "You're the second best animator around here."

"Fourth, but thank you for the sentiment," Manny drained his coffee cup. "No, I am right on this," he said when Larry opened his mouth. "After Anita, John and you, then there I am, but not more. This is a young man's game."

Larry was shaking his head. "I hate sounding like a broken record, but no way. My powers have been getting more powerful as I get older, are you any different?" He didn't wait for Manny's response. "You're too smart to let something happen like did last night to Jamison."

"That is true," Manny said. He was about to say something else, when the front door opened and Jamison crept in.

 _He looks like crap_ , Dawn thought. His clothes were covered in dirt stains and what looked like blood along his left arm. The television station said that he had jumped on the zombie when it attacked, helped contain it while the exterminators had been called in to burn the thing down. Points for him.

"Where have you been?" Manny demanded, cold anger in his voice. Jamison rubbed his eyes.

"At the police station. Is there any coffee?"

"What happened?" Larry interjected. Dawn was about to slip out from behind her desk and get Jamison his morning pick-me-up, when the office door opened again. All three men tensed.

It was a harmless-looking man in a shirt and tie, a light jacket over his arm. His round glasses reflected the overhead lights and highlighted a natural tonsure of curly hair.

"Mr. Clarke, I'm Irving Griswald, with the _Post-Dispatch_ , I was wondering if I might have a few minutes of your time?" he asked smoothly.

Jamison opened his mouth, then closed it without answering.

Dawn stood up, not sure if she was supposed to deal with the situation or let the three zombie-makers in front of her do something. Larry shook his head, and Dawn realized that he and Manny were going to let Jamieson deal with his own mess.

"I don't ... I don't have any comment at this time," Jamison stammered.

"Then maybe you'll just clarify a couple of things?" The reporter stepped forward. Then a hand clamped down on his shoulder and turned him around to face Anita.

"Hi, Irving," she said with false cheerfulness.

Was it Dawn's imagination, or did the reporter actually pale? "Good morning, Ms. Blake, I was just--"

"Leaving, I know. Sad, isn't it, when we so seldom see each other," Anita continued glibly as she pulled the reporter toward the front door. "We won't keep you, don't want to be late for work, do we?"

"Anita, please," Irving pleaded, his whole demeanor changing. Dawn looked closer. He had dipped his chin and rolled his eyes up to see Anita. That was a strange mannerism.

Anita, too, had changed mannerisms. She stood a fraction taller, more aloof. "No, Irving." Her voice had lost the fake bubbliness and was low and cold.

Irving turned and left, figurative tail between his legs. Anita shut the door after him and turned the deadbolt in the lock. Only then did she turn around to face Jamison.

"How are you feeling, Jamison?" Her voice was the same low threat as it had been a moment before.

He quailed for a second, then glared right back at her. "A little wiped out. Yourself?"

Anita pushed herself off the door and sauntered toward Jamison. Manny and Larry had inched to the edges of the room, leaving Jamison all by himself.

"Not doing too good, you know," Anita said conversationally. "There I was, at home in my bed, all done raising the dead for the night, when I got a phone call saying that there was a loose zombie in town and did I know anything about that?" Anita put her hand over her heart the picture of innocence. "I, of course, said no. Since you and I work at the same place, the nice police officers decided I didn't need to get involved in the case, especially since the zombie was all roasted. But it does leave a few unanswered questions."

"Are you sure about that?" Jamison asked, and there was something ugly in his face.

Anita frowned. "Yes, I'm sure there are unanswered questions."

"No, about being done raising the dead for the night." The innuendo was thick in the air. Whatever was going on gave Dawn uncomfortable squiggles in her stomach.

The astonishment on Anita's face faded, to the blankest expression Dawn had ever seen. "If you're insinuating I was with Jean-Claude, I wasn't," she said.

"So, what, instead of playing coffin bait, you were off with one of your animals?" There was a look of utter contempt on Jamison's face. "Have they drafted up a schedule, or do they just pass you around?"

Anita stepped back as if she had been slapped. Dawn certainly felt as if she had been punched in the gut.

Larry rounded on Jamison, furious. "Shut up, Jamison!" he exclaimed.

That ugly look on Jamison's face focused on Larry. "Oh, I see," he said, the tone of his voice loaded with something.

Larry's fist connected with the side of Jamison's jaw, and the other man stumbled against Dawn's desk and fell to the floor.

The silence that followed was broken by the sound of Dawn's phone ringing. No one moved for a moment, then Dawn skirted around the prone Jamison to get to her desk. "Animators Inc., how may I help you?"

Manny gave Dawn an incredulous look. She ignored him. "Yes, we do take appointments this early. I can schedule an appointment with you for tomorrow afternoon at three with our office manager. No, that is standard procedure, I assure you."

As Dawn spoke, Jamison picked himself up, using the desk as leverage.

"And your name? I'll tell Mr. Vaughn to expect you tomorrow. Thank you for calling Animators Inc." Dawn hung the phone up and straightened the appointment book.

"Don't ever talk to Anita that way again," Larry said, bringing Dawn back to the previous conflict.

"Who the hell do you think you are, to talk to me like that?" Jamison demanded, wiping blood off the corner of his mouth where Larry had hit him.

"Enough!" Anita shouted. She walked around Larry and stood, alone, in the center of the room. "Trying to distract us with comments about who I'm sleeping with isn't going to work, Jamison. You know why? Because this is not about me!" Her dark eyes were flashing with anger. "This is about a zombie that got away, which should not have happened! Do you have any idea what the fall-out of this will be? We're going to have the police trailing through here for days, making sure we're not some fly-by-night organization. Clients are going to start dropping like flies. And you ... you."

Anita stopped to take a breath, and Dawn was perversely glad that Jamison was looking a little green. All of her earlier sympathy for the man had evaporated.

"You are damned lucky that no one died. In case you have forgotten, letting a zombie kill someone can mean a death sentence." Anita's voice dropped to a quiet, dreamy quality. "If you get the wrong D.A. and a bad defence lawyer, a case like this one will get you twenty years for magical-malfeasance-based assault. And it would be really too bad to see you in jail over something as stupid as this."

Anita brushed past Jamison to walk down the hall to her office. Her door shut pointedly.

"That was the stupidest thing I have ever seen you do," Manny said quietly.

Jamison whirled unsteadily on him. "What do you mean?"

"Magical malfeasance cases are federal, you idiot," Manny said. It wasn't as apparent as Larry's rage, but Manny was also furious at Jamison, Dawn realized. "Who do you think they will call in if they need a federal marshal?"

Jamison went even greener.

"And if not Anita, then it'll be me." Larry managed to look menacing, all five feet and three inches of him.

Footsteps came along the carpeted hallway. It was Bert, his pale grey eyes narrowed as he glared at Jamison. "Jamison, got a minute?"

Shoulders slumped, Jamison followed Bert down the hallway back to the manager's office. When the door shut, Larry breathed out in a long sigh.

"Damn him."

"I could almost agree with you on that," Manny said. He turned to Dawn. "Ms. Summers, you must excuse us."

"No, it's okay," Dawn said. "It's been ... it's okay." She had been about to say that it had been a long morning, but it was hardly past eight.

Manny nodded at her, and swept down the hall. Larry gave Dawn a crooked smile, and trailed after Manny.

Dawn sank into her chair, alone at last. She had heard of interoffice bickering, but that was insane.

She sat, thinking morosely, until someone rattled the handle of the outside door. Oh right. Dawn hopped up to unbolt the door, and let the rest of the day happen. After the fight, a horde of reporters would seem like a piece of cake.

* * *

A few hours later, Dawn, knocked on the door of Anita's office. She heard a surly "Come in," and nudged the door open with her knee.

Anita's office was an explosion of paper. Files had been strewn across the floor; what looked like academic journals were piled on the desk, and the morning's newspapers reports on the zombie were taped up on the wall.

Anita herself was sitting cross-legged on the ground. "What?" she asked irritably.

Dawn held her laden hands out in front of her, as a sort of peace offering. "I just made a fresh pot of coffee, and thought you'd like some. Also, your afternoon client files."

"So not everyone's called to cancel?" Anita asked, lifting the papers off her lap and standing up.

"No, only four. Three were Jamison's clients, and one of Manny's. He's pretty bummed about it," Dawn said.

"They're stupid to cancel on Manny." Anita took the coffee mug from Dawn's hand. "He's the best there is."

"Larry said ... I mean, Mr. Kirkland said --"

"Call him Larry, please. I met Mr. Kirkland at Larry's wedding," Anita interrupted.

"Okay, Larry. He said that Manny was the second-best animator here at the company, but then Manny said no, he was fourth. Is he right?"

Anita pushed a strand of wayward hair behind her ear. "They're both sort of right. What Manny was talking about was power. He's the fourth most powerful animator here. Then Larry, then John Burke, then me."

She said it without any pride, just a fact. Dawn wondered how often people underestimated her because of her size.

"And the thing Larry was talking about?" Dawn prompted.

"Oh, that. I'm not sure if he meant it or not, but Manny's one of the best people we have here. I mean ethics, morals." A shadow passed through Anita's eyes. Then it was gone, and Dawn wondered if she was imagining things. "Like I said, one of best there is."

"Good to know," Dawn replied. Wanting to continue her conversation with Anita, but at an absolute loss for what to say, Dawn looked around the office. Her eyes stopped on a journal she recognized. "You have a subscription to _Discussions in Demonology_?"

"Yeah, a friend got it for me as a Christmas present last year," Anita said.

"Cool," Dawn turned the book-sized journal around to look at the cover. "Hey, I haven't read this one."

"Take it, have a read," Anita said, waving her hand at the book. "There's nothing in there I can use."

Dawn picked the journal up. She noticed it had been dog-eared, and, curious, she flipped it open to an article on demonic interference in the death process.

Suddenly, the mess of Anita's office made a bit more sense. She was looking for something to do with death. Something unusual. _I wonder if she's looking for something to explain Jamison's rogue zombie_? Dawn thought. After the little display in the lobby, Dawn would have thought that Anita would let Jamison clean up his own mess, like Manny and Larry seemed to be doing.

While Dawn pondered, Anita stepped around the papers on the floor and went to the large window. She sipped coffee as she stared out onto the sunny day.

"You probably don't want any more company right now," Dawn said. She didn't know if her suspicions were right, but either way, she felt like keeping them to herself.

"When do I ever?" Anita replied. The bitterness in her voice kept Dawn from leaving.

"About what Jamison said ... I mean, you should just ignore him. I've only been here for a day and even I can tell he's an idiot." Dawn felt her cheeks heating up as she spoke. _How stupid can you be?_ she thought. _Of course she knows to ignore Jamison._

Anita didn't even turn around. "It's okay. I know exactly how much attention to pay to Jamison." When Dawn didn't move, she added, "Thanks for the coffee."

Finally getting the hint, Dawn left, closing the door behind her as she went.

* * *

Dawn had been very happy to see Craig when he showed up early for work. She dumped the paperwork from all of the cancelled and new appointments into his waiting hands, and let herself out of the building into the soft night air.

She left the car windows down once she got onto the freeway, driving toward her temporary home. The day had been so hectic, she hadn't had a chance to think much. Adding to that her latest self-imposed project, and she had barely had time to breathe.

She begged off dinner when she got home, promising to tell everyone about the rampaging zombie the next day at breakfast. She instead headed straight up to her room and closed the door. Kicking off her shoes, she sat on the carpet and pulled a pile of paper out of her shoulder bag.

At work that afternoon, Dawn had taken the liberty of accessing her university's restricted Internet files on preternatural activity. Professor Merek had set up a specialized search engine that trolled the Internet for strange reports on news sites. Dawn had printed off a pile of documentation on recent odd zombie activity worldwide, leaving a quick note to the professor on the department bulletin board. She wondered how he would react to her current job.

Now, she had to call an expert of the matters of the strange and unexplained.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Giles, it's Dawn."

"Dawn, how nice to hear from you." Dawn could hear the smile in his voice. "How are your relatives treating you?"

"Great, considering that I basically fell from the sky on them." Dawn transferred the phone to her right hand and rotated her left wrist. "How's life with you guys?"

"As can be expected. Willow's still recovering from the severe drain on her magic after the last attempted apocalypse, but she's up and about," Giles said. "I'm having some progress on getting the council assets unfrozen. I should have news by early next week."

"Cool," Dawn replied. "How's Buffy?"

"Oh, she's just fine. She got a chance to practice her 'Apocalypse for Dummies' speech, as she called it. The new Slayers found it quite fascinating."

"Giles, it's been a few years. You can stop calling them the new Slayers now," Dawn teased.

"Yes, I know, it's just that ... I hate to sound as if I am complaining, but I don't remember Buffy ever being this..."

"Juvenile?"

Giles made a sound that was suspiciously close to a snort. "No, Buffy had her share of immaturity, as did you all. The new Slayers seem rather uncertain."

She couldn't argue with his interpretation of the Slayers. "Hey, I sprang fully formed from a monk's spell at fourteen. I was never immature."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. "Would you like me to respond or should I just pretend you never said that?"

"You and your denial," Dawn said, laughing.

"Indeed." Giles cleared his throat. "Would you like me to go and get Buffy?"

"Actually, no. I called to talk to you."

"You did?" Giles sounded pleased, and it made Dawn miss her sister's Watcher and accidental father figure even more. "What about?"

"I need your help with something."

"Ah, the other shoe."

"Stop it," Dawn ordered. "Have you seen anything in the news about a rampaging zombie in St. Louis, last night?"

"Yes, it made the evening news," Giles replied. "Why are you asking about it?"

Dawn took in a breath. "I'm sort of working at Animators Inc. here in town as a secretary?"

There was another long pause. "I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not," Giles finally said. "You girls seem to find yourselves in the strangest situations."

"Don't leave out Xander. Hyena boy? Crazy Indian spirits? Vengeance demon fiancée? Do I need to go on?"

"No, I resigned myself to this long ago. All right, Dawn, what do you want?"

"I need you to listen to what I've got, so far. Something isn't right about this, and I'm not sure if I'm imagining it."

"Go ahead," Giles said, and listened while Dawn described exactly what she had discovered that afternoon.

* * *

Long after she hung up the phone, Dawn was still frowning. The complaint from her stomach reminded her that she hadn't had eaten any supper, and she trailed downstairs to see about that cold pizza from the morning.

Even though it was late, everyone in the house was still up. Dawn passed Alice and Barry doing homework in front of the TV. In the kitchen, Aunt Karen was paying bills at the kitchen table. Her husband, Dawn's Uncle Eddie, was poking at the toaster with a screwdriver.

"How's the battle against the Man?" Dawn asked, taking the orange juice out of the fridge.

"Never ending," Karen said as she frowned down at her calculator. "Want to distract me with tales of rampaging zombies?"

"There's not really much to tell," Dawn said. "From what I heard, the animator was on his third zombie of the night, not usual for him, but he's done it before. When the zombie rose, it replied to his questions at first, then charged into the crowd."

"Dear me," Karen said. "Did it go for anyone in particular?"

Dawn shook her head. "No, it started flinging people about. Jamison got a couple of the audience to hack off the zombie's legs, then they kind of held it off until the exterminators got there to burn the thing. He couldn't control it."

"Did he lose control in the middle, or did the zombie come out of the grave blood-thirsty?" Barry asked from the door. He wheeled himself into the room as he spoke.

"Don't you have homework?" his mother asked.

He gave her a look with the annoyance only a teenager could muster. "Mother, zombies are so much cooler than math."

"I think he lost control in the middle," Dawn said softly. The pieces of the puzzle were slowly falling into place in her mind, but the picture was far from complete. "Anyway, Barry, if you want to see the thing, I'm sure the video's been on the news all day."

"Yeah, I already saw it," Barry said.

"Barry, stop pestering your cousin," Uncle Eddie said as he screwed the side panel of the toaster back together.

"Fine," Barry said and turned his wheelchair around.

"Hey, if anything comes up, I'll let you know tomorrow," Dawn offered. Barry waved a hand at her as he disappeared around a corner.

"That boy worries me," Karen grumbled.

"I wouldn't worry," Eddie said. "When I was his age, some friends and I were set and determined to watch a voodoo ceremony."

"And did you?" Dawn had to ask.

"No. Irritating the voodoo priestess in town seemed like a very bad idea, upon sober second thought." Eddie smiled and put down his screwdriver. "The toaster should work now."

"Dawn, you've got that look in your eye," Karen said, eyeing her niece. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that I missed something," Dawn muttered. "I gotta go." She remembered to grab some leftovers before she headed back upstairs, though. Research on an empty stomach only ever lead to headaches.

* * *

"What do we know?" Dawn asked herself when she was back up in her room. She looked down at her notes.

She knew that Jamison had done three zombies in a night before, several times. She knew that he had seemed to have control of the zombie at first. "Unless it was only the illusion of control," Dawn muttered.

She knew the zombie hadn't attacked anyone in particular. That probably crossed off the zombie being a murder victim. They usually went for their murderer alone, not bothering with anyone else.

That meant that what went wrong was either Jamison himself, something about the zombie, or outside interference. There was really no way she could check if it was Jamison. The zombie ... the police would probably go down that road, but Dawn pulled out the photocopy of the file anyway, to give it another review.

The zombie had been an elderly man named Thomas Abraham. He had been a professor at the university in St. Louis back in the late forties, in the romance languages department. The group who paid to raise the zombie were trying to figure out something about one of his translations of eighteenth century Spanish poetry. Dawn considered that someone sabotaged the raising to prevent the man from speaking, but she couldn't see how that might be plausible. Possible, sure. To a girl who had seen her hometown swallowed by the Hellmouth, anything was possible, but it wasn't very likely.

She made a note of that in her notebook, however.

That left the possibility that something external had interfered. She didn't know much about the politics of those who could raise the dead in St. Louis, outside of the debacle she had seen that morning at the office.

So did someone from Animators Inc. interfere with the zombie?

Was there anyway she could check that without getting fired? Probably not. She could see it now. "Hey, Anita, did you make Jamison's zombie go crazy the other night at the graveyard?" Not likely.

So ... other sorts of external influences. There was always the possibility of demon activity. Some sort of demon who interfered with the dead? There was that Nigerian demon Ovamobani, that Buffy killed in her last year in high school. Maybe something like that?

Dawn let her head fall back. It was late, and she was tired, and she hadn't even had a chance to read through the news stories she printed off. She also wanted to talk to one of Professor Merek's students, who was almost done his master's degree. He also had a strange affinity with the dead, not quite an animator, but a company on the West Coast had been trying to recruit him for months. He might have some ideas.

But this wasn't her fight, Dawn reminded herself. She didn't have to help save the world on this one. Yawning again, she put the papers in a pile to take with her to work tomorrow. Maybe it was time to let someone else save the world, for once. Why should she hog all the fun?

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Anita let herself into her house very early on Wednesday morning, exhausted. She had raised six zombies that night, then had to deal with the police whining about the rampaging zombie. Damn Jamison.

Just thinking about Jamison brought the fight at the office from earlier that day back to mind. Anita shook her head as she locked and bolted the front door. Someone had left a light on for her in the living room, she realized, as she shuffled down the hall. It wasn't for anyone else, because Damien didn't need light, and both Nathaniel and Micah could see perfectly in the dark.

Stashing the zombie bag in its place in the closet, Anita went into the living room and sank down onto the couch. She pulled her legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. It had been such a long day, starting with the phone call from Zerbrowski, then the fight at the office, then hours of research until she had to head out to the cemeteries. She was exhausted, emotionally and metaphysically.

Hiding behind all of that, she knew she needed to feed the damn _ardeur_. She had managed to get back down to one feeding a day, now that Damien was learning how to pull the sexual energy down at Danse Macabe into that triumvirate. She knew she needed to go into the bedroom and feed on either Micah or Nathaniel, but...

She pushed her hair back from her face with both hands and bit down a frustrated scream. Those stupid comments from Jamison had been running through her head all fucking day. She never paid any attention to what he said usually, so why was this different?

Was it because he wasn't entirely wrong?

"Anita?"

Anita opened her eyes. She hadn't realized she had closed them. Nathaniel was standing in the shadowy entrance of the living room, wearing only boxer shorts in the chill air of the house.

"Are you okay?" Nathaniel asked softly, frowning softly. His hair was loose behind him, a thick auburn cape framing his body. "Aren't you coming to bed?"

Aware she was staring at him like a trapped rabbit, Anita made an effort to appear calm as she slid her legs back into a normal sitting position. The only thing that gave her away was the shaking of her hands, the unevenness of her breath... okay, so a lot of things gave her away.

"Hi."

Nathaniel's frown grew at the word. He walked silently across the carpet and knelt in front of Anita. The scent of vanilla, Nathaniel's smell, reached her and she closed her eyes involuntarily. Was it wrong, what she felt for him? How could feeling this way for anyone be wrong?

She opened her eyes again when she felt Nathaniel's hands on her knees. "What happened, Anita?"

She stared down into those lavender eyes, eyes that would never judge her, never call her silly or stupid or bad, and found the words spilling out.

"You heard about the zombie, on the radio, right? I saw Jamison this morning, and started to talking to him about what he did, and he..." Anita sniffled, and realized that she was crying. God, how pathetic could she be? she thought. "He asked if you guys had a schedule, or if you just passed me around." Her voice was almost inaudible by the final word, but Nathaniel heard her, he had to.

His hands tightened on Anita's knees, and she looked at him, a bit surprised. He was angry, an expression she  seldom saw on his face. "Why are you paying attention to what he said?" Nathaniel asked, his voice a low, almost painful growl.

Anita was too astonished to say anything.

"Do you have any idea what it's like to be passed around, Anita?" he continued, the anger on his face giving way to pain. "Do you know what it's like to be used by someone, and then when he's done, for there to be someone else ready to take his place? Never knowing when it's going to end?"

She had absolutely no idea of what to say, and could only stare at Nathaniel. Anita had tried very hard to not think about what he had gone through when he was working on the streets, and later under Gabriel's pimpage.

Nathaniel laid his fingers on her cheek, a feather-light touch. "You share yourself with us, Anita, you let us close to you. It's a gift, being able to touch you and know that you love us. It's not anything at all like what I used to know. Don't ever let that bastard say those things to you, ever."

He buried his face in her lap, his arms going under Anita's knees until he was pressed as close to her as he could be from the floor.

She let her shields drop, just a little, and almost gagged at the bitter despair and self-loathing she felt emanating from Nathaniel. A small noise sounded in her throat, for Nathaniel drew himself back and turned away from her.

Anita didn't stop to think, to plan what she wanted to do. She slid off the couch and onto the carpet beside Nathaniel, wrapping her arms around his chest and back. She hugged him from the side as hard as she could, his skin almost hot under her hands, shaking. She held him until the shaking slowed, then stopped.

Finally, Nathaniel slid his arms around her, returned the hug, his face buried in the crook of her neck. Over his shoulder, Anita saw Micah standing in the shadows of the doorway. The horror and pain on his face told her he had heard the entire conversation.

She freed one hand and stroked Nathaniel's hair. "Have I ever told you how strong you are?" she murmured.

Nathaniel stiffened in her arms. "I'm not strong," he contradicted quietly.

Anita kissed the side of his head, his hair tickling her lips. "You've lived through things that would have broken me." She gently eased him off her shoulder, to look into his haunted eyes. "Strong isn't holding a gun. It's living through things that would kill most everyone else."

Something lifted in his eyes, although most of the pain remained. Anita took his hands in hers. "Let's go to bed," she said.

Nathaniel nodded, and they stood up together. Anita wrapped one arm around his waist and guided him toward the bedroom. When they reached Micah in the doorway, he put his arm around Nathaniel's shoulder so the younger man was between the two alphas.

It wasn't perfect, this life, Anita thought, but eventually she would learn to stop picking at what she had, and accept that these men loved her, and that it was all right that she loved them back. Sometimes it takes a good shock to remind you of how much you can lose, if you don't realize how much you have, Anita thought as they went into the bedroom, to that bed they shared that had become home to her.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

Wednesday began way too early for Dawn, who ironically enough had never been a morning person. The morning routine of a shower woke her a little, but not enough to stomach the dreck she found in the morning papers. At breakfast, cousin Barry watched, greatly amused, as Dawn made scathing comments about the newspapers' continued fascination with the zombie incident. They couldn't even get their facts straight, any of them, besides that Griswald guy who'd snuck into the Animators Inc. office the previous day.

Dawn lugged her notes from the previous day out to the car with her and drove to work in a bit of a funk. She still had no idea what had happened with Jamison, and part of her wondered if she was making a mountain of a really tiny molehill in an effort to feel not so damned useless.

Craig looked up wearily when Dawn came through the office door. "I thought nothing could have been as bad as yesterday night," he said in greeting. "I was wrong."

"More reporter calls?" Dawn asked sympathetically.

Craig nodded, already pulling his jacket on. "That, and the thrill-seekers who want Jamison to raise zombies for them. I'll never understand people."

A slight frown crossed Dawn's face. "People want a zombie raised just because it might jump them?" She stopped to think about it. "That's natural selection at work, I guess."

Craig smiled. "I'll see you later, Dawn," he said as he left, an extra little gleam in his eye.

Dawn stood staring at the door after Craig left. Had he been flirting with her?

She shook her head and dumped her notes on the desk. It took her a few minutes to sort them out into the order that she had learned at Giles's hand at the Magic Box apocalypse research parties. In between work-related phone calls, she spent most of morning reviewing the print-outs from the previous day, and the notes from her talk with Giles. She still didn't know what she was looking for, but more and more she was convinced that the zombie going wacky wasn't Jamison's fault. 

Her reading was interrupted when an annoyed Bert came in, took his messages and went into his office without a word to Dawn. Cheerful.

Once Bert vanished, Dawn powered up the computer. Wondering if anyone had replied to her message on the university board, she logged into her email account. There were three unread messages.

The first was from Xander, still on his worldwide quest for Slayers. He had sent her a brief note from Belarus, and promised to call her once he got back to the States.

The second message was from the college administration, informing her that if she planned on registering for the following year, she needed to submit a myriad of forms by the end of December. Dawn deleted the message.

The third message was from Rona, one of the Slayers in Cleveland. Back before Dawn had went to college, she had made friends with some of the other Slayers. After Dawn settled in San Francisco, she, Rona and Sunita, a Slayer from Calcutta, had stayed email pen pals.

Dawn frowned as she read Rona's latest message.

> Hey D. How's it going? I'd have written sooner, but it took the ten of us all damn day to clean up the mess. The Hellmouth out here went bug-nuts on the twenty-second, I swear. Vamps fighting demons, demons running helter-skelter, all kinds of crazy shit. You guys dealt with this all the time in SunnyD?
> 
> Do you know what's been going on? None of the vamps told us why it was party central, and none of the demons neither.
> 
> Anyway, we're all good. Robin and Faith and Sunny say hi. Kennedy kinda grunted when I asked if she had anything to say to you, so nothing's changed on that cold front. When you get a chance, call me, girl. I need someone to bitch to about Kennedy and Faith both.
> 
> Oh, and Robin's birthday's coming up in a few weeks. Wanna go in on a gift with us?
> 
> Rona.

Dawn re-read the first part of the email. The twenty-second... that was the same night as Jamison's zombie got loose. Dawn wished she believed in coincidences, but big freaky preternatural activity was seldom coincidence.

Closing her email, Dawn logged on to her college bulletin boards. Professor Merek had responded, highly amused at Dawn's predicament, and suggested that if she was looking at zombie activity, she should contact the preternatural biology department at the college in Dade, Florida. The country's leading specialist in zombie biology worked there, and might have some ideas.

There was another reply on the board from Ferdinand Casalma, the very grad student Dawn needed to speak with. He had only suggested that she call him, at some convenient point that day, as he would be in his office.

Dawn wondered if Bert mind if she made a long-distance call to Florida. Actually, she wondered if he would mind if she didn't tell him she was making a long-distance call to Florida.

The office door swung open, and Dawn guiltily turned around.

"Oh, hi Larry," she said.

"Hey." The red-headed animator slumped into the office and made a rather slow-moving beeline for the coffee machine.

"Are you okay?" Unless she was mistaken, he was wearing the same clothes as he had been the previous day.

He nodded, yawning widely as he came back, liquid stimulant in hand. "It's been a really long night," he said as he dropped into one of the client chairs.

The phone rang, and Dawn made an appointment for a new client the following week. Larry gestured vaguely in the phone's direction with his mug, sloshing tepid coffee onto carpet. "Another new one?"

"Yes." Dawn flipped through the appointment book. "That's fourteen new ones since the twenty-second."

Larry rubbed his hand over his face. "Shit, with Jamison off the roster and the police wanting so much of my and Anita's time, how are we going to deal with all these new clients?"

Dawn looked down at the notes by the phone that Craig left for her. "I think Bert's seeing them all first, to try and sort out the wackos and such."

"Wonderful," Larry groaned. "Not that I'd mind the money, but I don't know if I can do four zombies a night, every night, like Anita does six."

Dawn didn't know what to say about the zombie raising rivalry, so she focused on the one topic she had perfected, spending so much time around Anya: Money. "Do you have a big purchase planned?" she asked.

"Hmm? No, it's the baby." Larry pulled himself up in the chair. "Tammy, my wife, I mentioned her yesterday right?" Dawn nodded. "She's pregnant. Still working, although Dolph, that's the boss, has been keeping her on the sidelines recently. Anyway, they don't earn much on a cop's salary, so I'm trying to make as much as I can without burning out."

"So make Bert pay you more," Dawn suggested.

"We all get a percentage, pre-set."

"So raise the rates." Dawn waited until Larry was looking at her, eyebrows up. "You're the only zombie shop in town, right? People want their undead thrills, make them pay for it."

Larry smirked. "You've got a devious mind," he said as he stood up. He pointed at the papers all over Dawn's desk. "What are you working on?"

Flustered, Dawn shuffled some of her notes together into a pile. "Oh, just filing and notes and stuff, you know?" She tried for a big innocent smile, the one that always made Buffy zero on her.

Either Larry bought it or he was just too zoned from lack of sleep. "I'll be in my office. Can you call in about half an hour before my first appointment?"

"You're going to be sleeping?"

"God, I hope so," he said and stumbled off down the hall.

After the door shut, Dawn turned back to her notes. She had written down Ferdi's phone number, and she made herself dial it quickly, before she lost her nerve.

Keeping one eye on the hall by Bert's office, Dawn listened to the phone ring. "Hello?"

"Hi, is this Ferdi? It's Dawn."

"Hello, Dawn." Ferdi had been in charge of a few of her fieldwork classes at school the previous year, and like all of the students in the demonology program, they were on a first-name basis. "I take if you got my message?"

"Uh huh. What's up? And how was the monastery?"

"Quite nice, you might want to try it some time. The Armenian monks were quite learned in their teachings about the dead."

"I don't think that the monks would be so amenable to me," Dawn said. She wasn't a fan of monks, or religious orders of any sort. Funny, that.

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. So what's up?"

"I was contacted by an acquaintance of mine, an employee of the Resurrection Company in Santa Monica after she heard about the St. Louis zombie. It turns out that their employees had some severe trouble with their ceremonies on the fourth and sixteenth of this month. The same trouble occurred on the twenty-second."

Dawn was scrambling to write down what Ferdi was saying. "What kind of trouble?"

"Zombies all of sudden trying to get loose. They managed to bring them back under control and put them back, with difficulty."

"Why hasn't anyone heard of this?" Dawn hissed, almost dropping the phone as she tried to shuffle papers.

"Bad for business, why'd you think?"

"What about the other zombies shops? That one in New Orleans?"

"Haven't heard. They don't talk to me."

"Okay. Hey, at RezCo, did they think it was an outside influence?"

"After the second day, yes." Ferdi gave her a name. "Call her for more information, she's a good source."

"Thanks." Dawn paused. "Do you know what it could be?"

Ferdi hesitated on his end of the line. "I'm not sure if there could be anything to affect zombies in both Santa Monica and St. Louis on the same night without it being, shall we say, larger in scope."

"Nice hedge," Dawn said sarcastically. She ended the call and was almost out of her desk when the phone rang again.

Just like the Magic Box, Dawn thought bitterly as she picked up the receiver. Customers always wanting to buy scented candles or meditation Gaia crystals right when the world was ending. It made Anya happy, though.

And why the hell was Anya on her mind so much recently?

* * *

She'd missed lunch and she had a headache, but she also had the answers she was looking for, spread out in front of her in black and white.

Pile of old case files sat, disregarded, on the side of the desk. The three ones she wanted were right in front of her.

On the fourth of November, Charles had reported that the zombie he had raised gave him some trouble, not a lot, but enough to make it disconcerting. On the sixteenth, both Manny and Larry had reported little glitches. Then, Jamison's fiasco on the twenty-second.

Dawn tapped her pencil on the desk. Larry, Manny, Charles and Jamison... What was it about those four animators? The only ones that had not so far reported any trouble were Anita and John Burke.

As Dawn stared at the papers, willing comprehension into her brain, the office door opened and Anita walked in. She looked a lot calmer than she had the previous day.

"Afternoon," she said to Dawn with a nod. The dark-haired animator took in the state of the desk and raised an eyebrow. "Busy day?"

"I just wanted to make sure everything was filed correctly, in light of what happened," Dawn explained. "You know, in case."

Anita gave her a look. "You're remarkably efficient. No more phone calls?"

"Actually, yes. I mean no," Dawn replied. "Twenty new clients."

She wasn't sure what she was expecting, maybe an echo of Larry's frustration or annoyance. Anita only shrugged.

"Sounds good. You know what they say about idle hands."

Larry chose that moment to come stumbling out of his office, his clothes even more crumpled than before. "You didn't call me," he said to Dawn in a sleepy voice.

Dawn repressed a smile. He looked so cute. "You wanted half an hour, it's three-quarters of an hour now."

"Oh." Larry pushed his hair back from his face. "Hi, Anita," he said when he saw his co-worker standing there.

"If you keep sleeping here, Tammy's going to throw a fit," Anita said, brushing past Larry. "Baby hormones or not."

"It's easier than going home," Larry yawed. "I'd probably fall asleep at the wheel if I wasn't careful." He paused while Anita returned and handed him some water. "How you doing?"

Dawn knew they had forgotten her again, or at least put her on a level of importance as the office furniture. It didn't bother her, much. Even after all these years, it still happened some times when the Scoobies got together.

"I'm okay," Anita was saying. "I had a talk with Nathaniel last night. He... reminded me that I need to keep things in perspective. Oh, and one thing, about yesterday?"

"Yeah?"

"From now on, if anyone's going to deck Jamison Clark, it's going to be me, got it?"

"Deal."

* * *

It was almost time for Dawn to go home. She had enough notes to last her a while into the night. The plan was, when she got back to her aunt's house, to head onto the Internet and research if any demons were more active on the fourth, sixteenth and twenty-second of November.

She had contemplated calling the Slayers in Cleveland, but Rona made it sound like they were very busy. Willow and Giles were in New York, she thought, but Willow was still so weak. That left Buffy in Portland, but Dawn wanted to keep this mystery for herself.

Of course, if that selfish urge came back and bit her on the bum, she would spend the afterlife very upset.

The office door opened again. Dawn was starting to tire of that sound. Her eyes travelled across the room and the first thing she saw was the toes of expensive-looking black boots.

Her eyes moved up, slowly. The rest of the boots were hidden by black linen pants, loose around the ankles and legs, drawing closer around oh-so-masculine hips. A dark blue silk shirt was tucked into the pants.

Almost dreading that the face would not, could not, match the body, Dawn let her eyes travel up. Nope. A flawless, pale face, with dark blue eyes, staring at Dawn with open amusement. The man's lips opened very slightly in a smile, not enough to show teeth.

Teeth. Pale. Way too pretty to be real. A surge of adrenaline rushed through Dawn as she made herself look away from the man's eyes. Yes, he was probably a vampire, and no, there was no need to advertise the fact that she couldn't be enthralled by the vampires.

Nope. No need at all.

"Bon soir, mademoiselle," the man said. His voice was thick and warm, perfect. "I am here for Anita Blake."

Dawn swallowed, hard. A vampire, looking for the vampire executioner? Oh, not good. "She's not here," Dawn lied blithely, frantically trying to figure out what to do. She was putting in for hazard pay on this one.

The vampire looked at Dawn, surprised, and Dawn realized she was looking into his eyes again. Shit, she knew better than that. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.

A door opened down the hall. "Jean-Claude?" Anita called, coming into the lobby. "What is it?"

Dawn looked helplessly at Anita, who didn't seem at all worried that a vampire had just arrived in the office.

"Mademoiselle, you misunderstand my intentions towards your Ms. Blake," the vampire said. The French accent was just a little too thick, a contrivance, just like the warmth in his voice. Dawn decided then and there that she did not like him. "I am here merely to escort her to dinner, nothing more."

"Oh, knock it off, Jean-Claude," Anita said. "This is Dawn Summers, our secretary."

The vampire inclined his head ever so slightly toward Dawn. "Enchanté."

Anita turned. "Are some of those files from the last two weeks?" she asked. Dawn looked at the mess of her desk and nodded. "Can you put them in my office when you're done?"

What else could Dawn say? "Of course."

"I'll be right back," Anita said to the vampire, Jean-Claude. "Play nice."

Jean-Claude waited until Anita vanished into her office. Then the smile dropped. "And what does St. Louis owe the pleasure of your presence?" he asked. All pretense and warmth was gone, leaving a vampire that was all business.

Dawn made herself sit up straight. Here she was, staring into the face of the Master of the City, and she was all quivery with fear inside, but she'd be damned if she let that show.

"I ran out of money and needed a job," Dawn replied. As part of the first day's preparation, she'd taped a blessed cross to the underside of the desk. Her hand was inching toward it now. It would probably only serve to irritate the vampire on its way to her throat, but the only other alternative was throwing the files at him. That sure wouldn't slow him down.

"So there is no... ulterior motive, to have the Slayer's sister in my city?"

"Hey, there is no motive," Dawn protested. "I'm living motive free now. And don't think that everything I do is at B-- my sister's beck and call."

Jean-Claude took a step back and bowed to Dawn. "As you say, mademoiselle _._ "

Right. Dawn really didn't like him.

Anita came back down the hall, holding her jacket. "Everything all right here?" she asked cautiously.

"Yes," Dawn said, at the same time as Jean-Claude said, "Oui."

"Right," Anita said, the disbelief in her voice palpable. "Are you ready to go?"

"But of course," the vampire said, sweeping the office door open and holding a hand out to Anita.

Instead of taking it, like Dawn through she would do, she walked out on her own. Before Jean-Claude followed her, he fixed Dawn with a stare. There was a challenge in the glance, the sort of look one gives an adversary before a fencing match.

Dawn fervently hoped that it did not come to sharp pointy bits between her and the freaking Master of the City. Nothing good could come from such a setting.

And what was it with vampire hunters boinking the undead, anyway?

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

Jean-Claude laid a soft kiss on Anita's forehead. When she could gather a coherent thought, she opened her eyes and looked at him. His hair was all disheveled, making him all handsome. He still took her breath away, in a good way.

" _Ma petite_ , dawn comes closer," he said in a low voice that ran over Anita's skin like a warm hand. She moaned in protest.

"Don't want it," Anita said, pouting slightly.

"Come, Anita, even you cannot stop the rising of the sun," Asher said as he slid his body against her other  side.

"I know." Anita closed her eyes as Jean-Claude flicked his tongue over the flutter of her heartbeat in her neck.

"I believe Nathaniel is sleeping in with Jason this morning," Asher continued as Jean-Claude continued to kiss down Anita's neck.

"Huh?"

Asher grinned lazily down at her. "Nathaniel. Your pomme de sange."

Anita pushed Jean-Claude away from her. She was having too much trouble concentrating. "What are you talking about?"

"You need to sleep, ma petite," Jean-Claude explained as he moved across the bed to lie beside Asher. "I suggest that you go to Jason's bed and the arms of our naughty kitty."

The heaviness of day was fast approaching, and it stole the joy from Anita's veins. She sat up and looked at Jean-Claude, lying in the circle of Asher's arms. Asher had already closed his eyes and was waiting for dawn, but Jean-Claude stared at her, his midnight blue eyes wide and steady.

She hated touching him when his soul left for the day, but if he could bear to die, then she could bear to be with him when it happened. Anita cupped his cheek with her hand, feeling his soft skin and that underlying connection she had with him. "I love you," she whispered as, above the mile of stone, the sun rose, and Jean-Claude's soul was stolen for the day.

His last breath rattled out, and he and Asher died. Anita sat for a while, touching Jean-Claude's hair, wondering what it felt like to die.

Eventually, the still air crept around her and she realized that she was still naked and bleeding gently from Asher's bite on her breast. She pulled the sheet up over Jean-Claude and Asher, then set about finding her robe and her phone and gun.

The hallways of the lair under the Circus of the Damned was quiet, the furry and undead Whos all asnooze in their beds. Anita crept along the hallway to Jason's room. There was a faint light shining from the crack in the door. They had left it on for her, mostly likely.

The door swung open on silent hinges, and Anita saw Jason and Nathaniel lying on Jason's bed and its new bed frame. She closed and bolted the door behind her, and was out of her robe by the time she reached the bed. The covers were thin, but Nathaniel's' body heat would be enough to keep her warm, even this late in the year.

Jason stirred in his sleep as Anita slid into the bed between the two lycanthropes, but he soon quieted. Nathaniel wrapped his arm around Anita's waist as she spooned in against him.

"How are you?" he murmured into her ear, his breath ticking her ear.

She wriggled against him a bit more, finding the best spot. "Just great, now," she said sleepily.

Even though she wanted sleep, something nagged at the back of her mind until she realized that Nathaniel was awake and tense. Anita lowered her mental shields and reached out to Nathaniel.

He was worried, and it was so familiar to the previous day that Anita knew what it was about. She turned in his grasp so that she was facing him. In the faint light from the lamp, Anita saw that his eyes were wide and open.

She didn't say anything, just stared into his familiar eyes until the stress lines at the corners of his mouth smoothed out. "Thank you," she finally whispered.

"For what?"

Before she answered, Anita put her arm around Nathaniel's shoulders and pressed her body close to his. "For trusting me yesterday, to tell me those things," she whispered against his neck.

In the quiet, Anita could hear Nathaniel gulp. "I just... I wanted you..." Nathaniel's voice trailed off, but Anita didn't say anything, didn't interrupt. "I don't like to talk about it, what I used to be, but after what Jamison said--"

"Shh," Anita breathed, then pressed her lips to his. When he stopped trying to talk, she drew back a fraction. "I know you, Nathaniel. I know who you are and what you had to do, then. You were right, I was being stupid and I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry if I insulted you."

"No, you didn't," Nathaniel insisted, going up on one elbow. "I just... mentioning this kind of stuff... I don't... how can you want to be with me, when you know what I've done?"

Anita pulled herself into a sitting position. She couldn't have this conversation lying down. "I've said it before," she said, taking his face gently in both hands. "We are not what we do. Who I am..." she stopped. What she was about to say was a lot harder than anything she had done in a long time. She tried again. "Who I am, loves who you are."

"You mean that," Nathaniel said after a minute. Anita nodded.

"I do."

Nathaniel closed his eyes and, turning his head, kissed first one of her hands, then the other. "Thank you," he whispered.

There was movement on the bed, and Anita turned to see Jason staring up at her, an oh-so-serious look on his face. "You can still surprise me," Jason said.

"How?" Anita asked, and it wasn't friendly.

Jason gestured toward her and Nathaniel. "I never thought you'd really see Nathaniel, but you do. I never thought I'd see the day." Then a Jason-like grin split over his face. "Want me to go hide in the bathroom again?" he teased.

Anita rolled her eyes and slid back onto the bed, spooning once again against Nathaniel. "All I want to do is sleep."

Nathaniel squeezed her waist gently. "Jason, stop teasing."

Still grinning, Jason wiggled closer to Anita until their knees were touching. "Then will you at least come see my set tonight at the club?"

"No."

"Nathaniel's on, too. A double value at half the price."

"No. I have seven appointments tonight."

"Spoilsport."

"Good night, Jason. Good night, Nathaniel."

"Night, Anita."

The room was quiet. Anita was almost asleep when she felt the bed dip, and Jason turned out the bedside lamp.

* * *

 

Something was ringing. Anita pushed her hair out of her face and tried to sit up, but someone's arm was over her chest.

"Jason, you got to move," Anita groaned. She pushed at Jason until he rolled off of her, then she climbed off the end of the bed and got to the cell phone in the pocket of her robe just as the ringing stopped.

Anita sighed. Maybe they'd call back. She took the phone and climbed back in the bed. She caught sight of the bedside clock. She had been asleep for five hours. No wonder she was hungry.

The phone rang again, and Anita pushed what she hoped was the right button. "Hello."

"Blake, it's Zerbrowski."

"That's nice," Anita replied drowsily.

"Look, you got to wake up, Blake, we think we may have found something on this zombie case thing."

Anita sat up, all thoughts of sleep chased from her head. "What do you mean?"

Zerbrowski coughed. "Tammy was calling around, seeing if any one else had any suggestions on why a zombie got loose. Seems that an animator in California almost lost his zombie on the twenty-second."

"So whatever it is, is happening across the country?" Anita demanded. She flipped on the overhead light and started rummaging through Jason's closet for clothes.

"Oh, that's just the start. The same animator had troubles on the sixteenth."

"Shit."

"So then Tammy, understandably curious, called that New Orleans outfit with the clothing designer name."

Zerbrowski paused. "Damn it, Zerbrowski," Anita snapped, halfway into a pair of Jason's jeans. "Tell me the rest or I'm going to hurt you."

"So they're missing an animator."

Anita froze. "Define missing." She held the phone between her shoulder and ear while she buttoned up a silk shirt.

"As in no one's seen Francois Duraey since the first of the month. The feds were only brought in last week. His place was a mess, like someone tore it up looking for something. The police think that someone may have kidnapped or killed him."

"Any ransom?" Jason and Nathaniel were both awake now, watching Anita.

"None. And really, if you're going to take an animator, it probably wasn't for money," Zerbrowski said. "Can you come down here? This puts a whole new spin on the case."

"Yeah, I'll be down as soon as I can. Oh, and you may want to call John Burke, he may know this Francois guy, maybe they worked together."

"Arnet's already on it. You know, if she keeps this thing with Burke up, you may have your stripper boy all back to yourself again," Zerbrowski said. He would tease on his way into hell.

"I'll be sure to cry a lone tear about it," Anita snapped and hung up the phone.

Jason rolled over and closed his eyes. "Now that the entertainment's done, can the rest of us get some sleep?" he asked.

"Shut up," Nathaniel said. He turned worried eyes to Anita. "Are you going to be okay? Has Asher's bite stopped bleeding?"

Anita nodded, slipping into her gun holster.

"What about breakfast?" Nathaniel pressed. "You need to make sure you eat."

Anita came back over and sat beside him on the bed. "I'm going to be okay. I'll get some breakfast at the station. You," Anita kissed him softly on the lips, then on the forehead. "You need to go back to sleep. And have fun tonight at work."

"I always do," Nathaniel said softly, and there was something very masculine in his voice that made Anita blush, just a little. He grinned when he saw her expression.

"Sleep tight, you two." With that, Anita slipped out the door, headed for the surface and this strange case of the missing animator.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

"Dawn, are you still here? The phone's for you!"

"Thanks, Aunt Karen." Dawn dropped her bag by the front door and dashed back inside. If she didn't hurry, she was going to be late for work. "Hello?"

"Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey and you smell like one too!"

Dawn rolled her eyes, but broke out into a huge grin. "Thanks, Buffy. I love you too."

"Hey, how often do I have popular approval to call my little sister smelly and ugly?" Buffy teased.

"How often do you need it?" Dawn shot back. "How are you doing?"

"I'm doing good. And as of twelve o'clock eastern time, I'll be spectacular."

"Sale on shoes?" Dawn guessed.

"Nope. Guess again."

"Cindi Lauper's holding a reunion tour and you got tickets?"

"No, and ew. Giles and me finally got the accounts all liquidy and the transfer takes affect at noon."

Dawn squealed. "Buffy, that's great! Me too?"

"Sort of. We should have the money into your account by tomorrow. So think of it as a day-late birthday present."

Dawn shrugged, still grinning. She caught sight of the clock and realized that she absolutely had to leave or Bert was going to have a fit. "I took the world not ending as my birthday present, so anything else is a bonus. Look, Buff, I've got to run, I'm really going to be late for work."

"Yeah, Giles said you were working but he was all secrecy man when I asked where."

Dawn winced. As much as Buffy had improved over the last few years at accepting that her sister was an adult and could make her own decisions, she still tended to flip when Dawn voluntarily entered into the less than ordinary. "I'm a secretary."

"Not exactly high end. Where?"

"Animators Inc."

There was a sputtering sound on the other end of the line. "Animators Inc., the zombie makers?"

"Yes?"

Buffy actually growled. "Are you nuts? What is it with you and raising the dead, anyway?"

"Hey, it's a lot safer than my school work," Dawn defended.

"Not a selling point."

"And the worst I'm risking is a paper cut, or maybe tetanus from the stapler. I'm not doing anything in the field. I learned my lesson on that one." Dawn swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. Her one and only foray into the world of zombies had been just after her mother died. She'd actually gotten everything into effect, when Buffy came downstairs and found out what was going on. Dawn had been terrified of what might happen, that her mother might come back wrong, and tore up the picture.

She'd never know what would have happened. She didn't want to.

"Anyway, Buffy," Dawn continued, "this job, it's a cool thing. It's different. It's a break."

Buffy sighed, and it made her sound older than she was. She had never made that sound before she came back from heaven. "It must be nice to take a break," she said wistfully.

"Is anything going on?" Dawn asked. "Any big bads?"

"Yeah. I've got a plane in a few hours to West Virginia. Something's mutilating little kids and eating their livers. It's got seven already."

"So they're finally bringing you in? Do they know what it is?"

"Something big and fugly with sharp claws. I cannot believe they waited this long to call me about it."

"Well, if you were the West Virginia police, would you want to Feds to bring in a military consultant to kick the fugly's ass?"

"But there are lives on the line. Little kids lives. Why can't they save the jurisdiction crap for traffic tickets?"

"That's not the way it works. Do they know you're coming?"

"I think so. The head Fed was supposed to tell them. You know, if you'd told me three years ago that I'd be working on a consulting basis with the military to kick a little demon ass, I'd have said you were on crack."

"Time wounds all heels," Dawn said. "I'd love to continue this talk, but..."

"Yeah, I know. Once again, happy birthday, and have fun playing Dawn of the Dead."

"God, Buffy, that was like the worst pun ever," Dawn exclaimed. "Love you lots, and be careful."

"I will be. Love you too."

* * *

 

> Possibility one: Another animator is making with the crazy?
> 
> Pros: Who else would have such an affinity with the dead? Would know how to influence zombies, and at what stage in the raising ceremony.
> 
> Cons: Would the animator be able to recognize the other animator influence? Could one person (human: can a non-human be an animator?) influence zombies across the whole country? If more than one, how do they co-ordinate and how did they hook up? Underlying purpose to such a scenario seems absent.
> 
> Possibility two: The zombies themselves are screwy
> 
> Pros: Easiest.
> 
> Cons: The coincidence needed would be of Glorificus proportions.
> 
> Possibility three: Someone is using demony influences to screw with zombies.
> 
> Pros: Demons always seem to factor into this sort of stuff. The energy boost would be the best, and there are tales of the necromancers of old/ancient bone guys using demons to gain power over the dead. Also would make me somewhat useful.
> 
> Cons: Ugly, dirty, uncertain and prone to failure. Also, the required sacrifices and besmirchement seem to be missing (possibly not yet found). The requisite sense of evil is missing.
> 
> Possibility four: It's something no one's thought of and will kill us all in our sleep.

"Or maybe it's bunnies," Dawn grumbled. She tossed her pen on the desk and sat back in her chair. The desktop was strewn with files and papers and Dawn's trusty notebook. The piles of her research boiled down into those four points, plus the list of possible demons that had anything to do with zombies. She was still waiting for a pile of names from Giles, on demons that had anything to do with the dead. Willow, all bored and kitten-weak in New York, was doing the research while Giles was in lectures.

With a frown, Dawn turned her thoughts to Willow. After the witch had saved the world, drained of power, she had stayed with Giles in New York to recuperate. It had been almost a month, and from what she gathered from the conversation with Giles, Willow had recovered her magic far faster than her general strength.

Giles was no longer worried about Willow losing it like, well, when Willow Lost It, but Dawn had heard the worry in his voice when he spoke of the witch. While Willow's magic continued to grow, her physical health had deteriorated since Sunnydale. They had all noticed it, but no one knew what to say. 'Hey, Willow, how about you use some of that save-the-world power to fix your stamina so you're not so weak all the time'?

With a jolt, Dawn realized that everyone in her life who had died had done so suddenly. Her mom, Buffy that first time, Tara, Anya, all the Slayers. No one had ever wasted away, but that was what was happening with Willow. No one knew what to do. Maybe there was nothing to do.

The phone rang, and Dawn was drawn back to the office setting, with its comfortable colors and hushed noises. Life always went on, she thought, as she closed her notebook and reached for the phone.

* * *

Dawn was on the phone when John Burke came through the door. He looked totally lost in thought, a complete change from the confident and somewhat arrogant animator who had breezed through the lobby the day before.

"Mr. Burke?" Dawn said tentatively as she put down the receiver. He blinked and shook his head. "Is something wrong?"

Anita came through door just in time to catch Dawn's last comment. "John, do you want to sit down?" she asked.

"No, it's okay," he replied, still frowning. "I just... I can't get Francois out of my head. Why would anyone abduct him?"

"Did you work with him for a long time?" Anita asked.

John nodded. "A while. I trained him, right when he was fresh out of seminary school. He wasn't powerful, not in the least, but he was a good guy."

Anita bit her lower lip. "Was he a priest?"

"No, he left the seminary after a couple of years. The Catholics really don't like animators in the priesthood. But he was okay with that." John ran his hands through his hair, and as he moved, he seemed to see Dawn for the first time. "I am sorry, Miss Summers," he apologized. "I trust my appointment files are in my office?"

There was the hints of arrogance Dawn was used to. "Yes, all five of them. Mr. Vaughn wanted to see you at some point, but he said whenever you were free."

John nodded, then turned back to Anita. "You will tell me if you hear anything about Francois?"

"Of course."

After John left for his office, Anita groaned and let her head fall back. "God, what a day."

"Who's Francois?" Dawn asked, trying very hard not to seem as curious as she really was.

"Hmm? Oh, Francois Duraey, an old colleague of John's. He worked as Elan Vitale, in New Orleans," Anita explained. "He's been missing for almost a month. No note, no clues, just gone."

"Would that have anything to do with Jamison's rampaging zombie?" Dawn asked, more to herself than Anita. Her mind was racing. If there was a link between the missing man and the rampaging zombie, that would certainly narrow down the list of possible suspects in the zombie case.

"Maybe, there's no way to know just yet." Anita sighed. "None of this makes any sense."

Looking at the tiny animator, frail and delicate in a pair of worn jeans and a blue shirt, belied by the very large gun in the shoulder holster, Dawn made a decision. She needed to tell someone the information she had gathered on the zombies. It was quite possible that people's lives were at stake. "Ms. Blake?"

"Yeah?"

"Would I be able to talk with you, about something?"

"Sure, I guess." Anita looked surprised. "I have to run out again, the police need me, but how about tomorrow?"

"Sounds good," Dawn replied. She watched as Anita quickly ran down the hall to her office, then exited the office. She would much rather have talked to Anita that day, but the day's reprieve would give her time to get her notes in order and to factor in the missing animator into the mess. It would also give her a chance to bring back the office files she had accidentally forgotten at home that morning, in the excitement of Buffy's call.

Then she winced. Tonight was her birthday party, and if she had read Alice's clues correctly, there would be no rest that night. Just what she didn't want, a night to party on the town while the world was ending.

Maybe she could get some work done after she got home. Whatever it was, probably couldn't be that late, right?

* * *

"Let me get this straight."

Dawn pulled her arm out of her cousin Alice's grasp. She almost slipped on the icy cobblestones, and it only irritated her more.

"You want me to go into a strip club on my birthday."

"Yup."

"A male strip club."

"Uh huh."

"Filled with both lycanthropes and vampires."

"And a couple of humans, but I don't think they're on tonight."

Dawn's eyes grew wide at her cousin's words. "You're been here before?" she squeaked.

Alice smiled weakly and opened her mouth to answer, but Alice's friend Jennifer leaned over Alice's shoulder to answer. "We brought her here for her twenty-first, and couple of night since. Come on, Dawn, you'll love it."

Dawn didn't think she would enjoy watching strange men taking off their clothes. She had a hard enough time watching people kissing with tongue on TV.

Alice and Jennifer caught Dawn's arms and dragged her to the entrance. A young blonde man with an easy smile grinned when Jennifer flounced to the top of the steps.

"Hey, Jennifer, how's it going?" he said genially.

"Just great, Clay," Jennifer replied breathily. Dawn restrained herself from rolling her eyes at the obvious flirtation.

"Got ID?" the man, Clay, asked.

Dawn actually had the wild thought that she could go home if she pretended she forgot her driver's licence, until Alice grabbed Dawn's purse and pulled out the small plastic card for her.

"Twenty-one today?" Clay asked, looking Dawn over.

The glance made Dawn angry. "Actually, I'm only seven, so I'm probably not old enough--" Alice elbowed Dawn in the ribs until she stopped talking.

Clay handed back the driver's licence. "This is your first time here," he noted. "Don't worry, we take good care of our birthday girls."

Well, wasn't that was the most ominous thing Dawn had heard all day. She glumly let Alice and Jennifer herd her into the club.

Just inside the doors, the music was pounding loudly, even at eleven at night. Was it early or late for this sort of thing? Dawn didn't know. Her university social circles ran so far from the concept of vampire male strippers that it wasn't funny.

A very large black-shirted chest was suddenly in their way. "Can I see some ID?" the deep voice above the chest asked.

Dawn blinked and looked up. And up. The voice belonged to the solidest vampire Dawn had ever seen. Right now, his arms were crossed over his chest and he was glaring down at them.

Taking a moment to gulp melodramatically, Dawn almost turned around and walked out of the establishment, but Alice had an iron grip on her arm.

"Hi Buzz," Alice said, more animation in her voice that Dawn had ever heard. Please don't let my cousin have the hots for the vampire bouncer, Dawn prayed.

"Alice," Buzz the vampire said, and inclined his head ever so slightly in her direction. "It is good to see you again." Then he smiled very slightly, still managing to flash a bit of fang. Not old, this one. "I still need to see some ID."

After a few pokes and prods, Dawn drew her driver's licence out of her tiny purse and held it out, taking care not to touch the walking dead man.

After Buzz examined the card, he handed it back to Dawn. She was mildly disappointed that he hadn't found anything wrong with it. He gestured the trio of girls to walk past.

Dawn let out a breath, happy to be done with yet another hurdle, even if it meant walking closer to the potentially naked men.

But it was not to be. Standing just beyond Buzz, at the entrance to the main room, stood another barrier. Someone Dawn had met before. Someone more dangerous than the bouncers.

Jean-Claude's lips spread into a smile, careful not to reveal his fangs, as he caught sight of Dawn and her companions. "What do we owe the pleasure of your company tonight,mademoiselle, at my club?" the Master asked, leaning ever-so-seductively against the wall. His white lacy shirt was open down the front to show the perfectly defined chest and the imperfection of a cross-shaped burn, while the leather pants left only the most intimate details to the imagination. Just the sight of him made Dawn's breath catch. He was the ultimate wet dream. And just as real.

"Jean-Claude, we didn't know you'd be here tonight," Jennifer said, awed.

Jean-Claude cast his eyes to her, momentarily, the smile still on his lips, but Dawn could see it was forced. For some reason, that made her mad on Jennifer's behalf. She took a step forward until she was close enough to whisper to him.

"You know, you invite these people into your place, you can at least play along with the game," Dawn hissed.

Jean-Claude raised his perfect eyebrows. "How do you mean?" He sounded amused.

"Don't be all disdainful of your customers," Dawn whispered. "You ask them in here to spend their money, at least let them think they have a chance."

Jean-Claude looked nothing but amused. "You think you know why I am the way I am?" he asked, the warm tone in his voice belying the angry glint in his eyes.

And here she was, looking into the eyes of the Master of the City again. She was never going to learn, and at his point, looking away was to admit weakness. "You think I'm going to fall for the act? I don't go after other women's boyfriends. Especially co-worker's boyfriends."

Suddenly, Jean-Claude burst into restrained laughter. Dawn didn't get it; she hadn't intended to be funny. "Of course, mademoiselle," Jean-Claude said once he could talk again. "You have shown me the error of my ways, and made me realize how wrong I have been."

Dawn narrowed her eyes at him. The sarcasm was tangible, and she didn't see the punch line of the joke, but knew she was a large part in it.

"Come, beautiful ladies," Jean-Claude continued, and held his hands out to Jennifer and Alice. Looking as if they had just won the lottery, they let him guide them deeper into the club. "The joyous surprises of this night are just beginning."

The ominous comments just kept on coming. Sadly, there was no way Dawn could leave. Dreading every step, she let Jean-Claude lead her, Alice and Jennifer to a table by the stage, right by the action.

* * *

Well, scratch this up as the most awkward night of her life, Dawn thought glumly two hours later. Jennifer and Alice had been drinking steadily since they arrived, thoroughly enjoying the strippers. Maybe to make up for their indulgence, or perhaps as a reaction to the embarrassment, Dawn had only had one glass of wine.

It wasn't that she was a prude, she thought as the young man on stage whipped off another strategically placed article of clothing. She had seen a few naked men in her time. But usually she saw them naked when it was a his-and-her matching nakedness set, not in front of a bunch of screaming women.

As the stripper danced backstage, Dawn finished the last drop of wine from her glass. So far, being twenty-one was just like being twenty: uncertain, embarrassed and annoyed. It made Dawn wonder if it ever got better.

The lights on stage fell, and Jean-Claude stepped into the spotlight. He smiled so widely that his fangs showed. The gasps of horror from the audience almost seemed fake, as if no one really realized the danger the vampire on stage could cause. Even so, Dawn couldn't work up any real fear at Jean-Claude in this setting. He seemed like a caged tiger, beautiful, but safe. Just don't reach into the cage, wanting to touch.

"I hope you have enjoyed our offerings so far tonight, at Guilty Pleasures." The vampire's voice drifted through the club like smoke. Dawn sighed as the words stroked over her skin like a caress. Never before had she felt a vampire's tricks so deeply. No matter what else she thought of him, he was good. "And now, the one you have been waiting for... Brandon."

Screamed cheers met the name. Dawn prepared herself for more of the same, when the stripper sprang out on stage in a swirl of skin and long auburn hair.

If she had been drinking, she would have choked, but as it were, she could only stare. Good god, it was Nathaniel. She actually forgot to breathe for a few seconds as she watched the young man she had seen a few days before. Then, he was sitting amicably in her office, not five feet from her, fully clothed and all quiet and gentle. But now, he was none of those things.

To the hard beat of the music, he moved, stalking, dancing, spilling around the open stage with an inhuman grace.

Dawn watched, spellbound, as Nathaniel dropped to his hands and knees, and did a strange push-up that made it look like he was fucking the stage. Other women in the audience screamed, and money rained down. Nathaniel started to crawl around the stage, his hair spilling over his almost naked body, so well defined and muscular, as women tried to reach out to him, to touch him.

Dawn's hands were curled into balls in her lap. There was something unworldly about him, a grace that was in no way natural. Watching how he bent and curved around himself was hypnotic, almost intoxicating.

Then the music changed, and Nathaniel sprang up. He was suddenly in front of Dawn, holding his hand out to her.

All eyes in the club were on them, and it changed from being a safe fantasy to being the most embarrassing thing Dawn had ever felt. A hot flush rose to her cheeks, and she wanted to crawl under the table to avoid having everyone looking at her. The absolutely last thing she wanted to do was to join Nathaniel on stage. It was one thing to think quiet naughty thoughts about him, but quite another to act them out in front of everyone. There was no way she was going up there.

She forced herself to look up, and was a bit surprised to see the question and hesitation in his lavender eyes. It made her feel a tiny bit better, and she found the strength to shake her head, firmly.

There were shouts all around, as the other women in the audience tried to gain Nathaniel's attention. He nodded at Dawn, just once, then shifted his glance to the chair beside her, where Jennifer sat.

Nathaniel pulled the willing Jennifer up on stage, and they began to dance around, or at least Dawn assumed they did. The next few minutes, as Dawn sat staring at her empty wine glass, were the most embarrassed she had ever lived through. It was hard enough sitting in a strip club. Sitting at a ring-side seat of a strip club, where her cousin's best friend and her co-worker's boyfriend were pantomiming a few rather raunchy sex acts, topped every negative list Dawn had.

When the set was finished, when Nathaniel had vanished into the curtains and Jennifer was back giggling  in her chair, Jean-Claude once again appeared on stage. "We will take a short break," he said, the tone of his voice suggesting naughty things. "And we will come back with Justin."

Voices stirred, a clamoring of female voices as the lights came up slightly. Waiters in leather pants moved around the room, delivering more alcohol to the already-intoxicated crowd. Alice leaned against Jennifer, giggling like a schoolgirl. Dawn, however, needed some air.

"Do you two want something to drink?" she asked, not even waiting for Alice's nod as she got up out of her seat and made a beeline for the bar.

She had ordered more cocktails for Alice and Jennifer, and directed them to the table, when someone spoke at her elbow.

"Are you Dawn?"

Dawn whirled around, to see a young man with curly blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes standing beside her. When her heart climbed down out of her throat, she replied, "Who wants to know?"

The young man smiled shyly. "Jean-Claude asked me to come over here and apologize on his behalf."

Dawn frowned and turned back to the bar. The bartender had placed another glass of white wine on the burnished oak for her. "This day just keeps on getting better and better, doesn't it?"

The young man took the seat next to her. "He didn't mean to put you on the spot like that, he really didn't," he said, leaning in close. The smell of his cologne was faint but nice. "He thought that since you were here for your birthday, you'd like a bit of extra attention. He told Nath-- I mean Brandon, to ask you up on stage."

Dawn sighed. "It's just... I couldn't go up there, not with Nathaniel being who he was. Is, I mean."

The young man raised his eyebrows. "You know Nate?"

"Yeah, I met him at work. It's rule forty-seven, you know, thou shalt not covet thy co-worker's boyfriend, especially when that co-worker is the scary."

The man actually laughed. "You work with Anita?"

Dawn nodded and took a tiny sip of her wine. "Yes, I do. Do you know her?"

He nodded. "Yup, she's the boss."

Dawn let it go. She had no idea what he meant, and right then was not the time to ask. "So, why isn't J.C. over here apologizing himself?"

The blond smiled again. "Image."

"Ah, yes, can't have the Master admitting a mistake." Dawn looked over at the stage, currently empty, and then back at the messenger. "As much as I hate to say this, tell him that this whole thing with Nathaniel... it's cool."

"Excellent." The man grinned wide, breathtakingly. The smile looked real, and it made Dawn's heart ache. Not for him, per say, but for what might have been, one day, with someone else. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get ready for my set tomorrow." The man hopped off the bar stool.

Suddenly emboldened, Dawn reached out a hand and touched the man's arm. She could feel the muscles under his skin, so hot. "You said you know Anita... could you answer a question for me?"

The man nodded, suddenly serious. "I'll try."

Dawn wasn't sure how to phrase it. "Anita... well, she was at work on Monday with Nathaniel, and he said he was her boyfriend, but then Jean-Claude came to pick her up for a date last night."

The man stood still, waiting for more.

"So... does she have more than one boyfriend?"

Fighting to keep his face straight, the man nodded. "Yes. And they're all okay with it," he added.

Dawn let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "Good."

The man smiled, and held out his hand for a handshake. "I'm Mar-- Gregory," he said.

"Dawn," she replied, taking his hand in hers. It was soft and warm, but so strong. Gregory drew his hand back and smiled wistfully at her before turning and heading backstage.

 _Stop watching the nice stripper walk_ , Dawn admonished herself. She was drawn out of her thoughts as someone bumped into her and knocked her purse to the ground.

"I'm so sorry," the woman apologized, as she and Dawn both bent to pick up Dawn's purse.

"Oh, it's fine," Dawn replied, gathering up the tiny purse. She watched the woman vanished back into the crowd at the club before picking up her wineglass and making her way back to the table. After the Nathaniel incident, unless the next stripper happened to be Larry Kirkland, she could make it through anything.

* * *

Anything was a bit of a generous assumption, Dawn through woozily a few minutes later. She felt light-headed and nauseous, all accompanied with an overwhelming urge to fall asleep.

"Alice," Dawn mumbled, trying to catch her cousin's attention. The cousin in question was gazing open-mouthed up at the stage, where a very nice-looking blonde man was stripping down to the basics. "Alice."

"What?" Alice finally said.

"I need to go home now," Dawn muttered.

After a bit of argument, Alice helped Dawn to stand up and got her purse and coat from the table. Jennifer was about to stand, but Alice shook her head. "I'll put her in a cab and come back," her cousin said.

She was losing time, Dawn realized as she and Alice were suddenly at the door. Then Buzz was talking to them, and Alice said something about too much wine. Dawn wanted to dispute the interpretation, but then they were on the street, with Alice trying to flag down a cab.

"Can I help?" asked a voice Dawn didn't recognize. She concentrated on not hurling all over her shoes. Then Alice was back in her face.

"Dawn, I'm going to go back inside, and Mary's going to help you catch a cab, okay?" Then Alice was gone before Dawn could respond.

Dawn tried to look around, and finally focused on this Mary person. When her vision cleared, her heart froze. It was the same woman who had knocked into her at the bar. There was a hard, calculating expression on her face.

"You drugged me," Dawn slurred, finding it hard to stay upright. The sudden nausea, the memory lapses, what else could it be?

"You're right," Mary's voice echoed. "Luckily for me, your companion was stupid enough to leave you alone, to catch the last of Justin's act. I'm sorry about the drugs, they tend to make you sick."

There was a pressure against Dawn's mouth and nose, and a disgustingly sweet smell assailed her. She tried to take a deep breath to clear her lungs, but the smell only got worse. The last conscious thought Dawn had was someone was pressing a chloroformed cloth over her mouth. _Not again_ , Dawn through groggily as she passed out.

She didn't even have time to be scared.

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes about Anita - her sometime-bitchiness about other people (in particular other cops and women) and the heternormative thoughts are canon, for better or worse.

* * *

The sound of the cars vanished into the distance, and Anita was left listening to the soft sounds of the wind in the night. Her last client for the night was away and the zombie she raised was safely back in the ground, rags and bones once more.

The zombie equipment back in the bag, Anita stood up and threw her head back. The stars were bright in the winter sky, twinkling high above, peaceful in the darkness.

"Why are you smiling, Anita?"

Anita looked over at her companion, who was perched on a cold stone tombstone. The moonlight on his long red hair threw his face into shadows. "I like winter, Damian. When I was a kid, I used to sneak out of the house and climb up on top of the tool shed to watch the stars."

Damian nodded, the movement sending his hair back. "I understand. When I was... when I was in the place of she-who-made-me, the only thing I could see at night were the stars. I spent many long years with them as my only companion."

The sadness and sorrow in his tone was almost palpable. Curious, Anita lowered her shields a little, just enough to feel what her vampire was feeling. _So lonely_.

"Damian..." Anita trailed off, not sure what to say.

The vampire moved his head again, and his hair once again covered his face. "Master."

"Don't call me that," Anita snapped, suddenly angry. She had been trying so hard to do right by him, to make up for all those months of abandoning him to a cross-wrapped coffin, then binding him to her in the triumvirate, but she so didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know how to be anyone's master. "I've told you to call me Anita."

The silence was overwhelming, as Damian pulled his humanity in on himself until he was as silent and still as the dead. A moonlit melancholy settled over Anita's skin like cobwebs, thick and insubstantial.

She sighed. Leaving the zombie bag at the graveside, she walked over the light snow, crunching underfoot, until she stood before Damian. "Look at me," she urged gently, until his emerald green eyes met hers.

Anita ran a cold finger gently over the bridge of Damian's nose, and whispered, "This isn't easy for me, Damian. I'm new at this whole master thing, while you've had over a thousand years. You need to cut me some slack. I am trying."

"I know," Damian whispered back. "Thank you for bringing me along this evening."

Anita tugged Damian off the stone until he was standing before her, then wrapped her arms around him in a hug. She pressed her cheek to his chest and waited until he awkwardly placed his hands lightly on her shoulders. "I needed someone to watch my back in case whatever's messing with the zombies came after me. I knew I could count on you."

Through the partly open marks, Anita felt a surge of pride in Damian, and knew that she had said the right thing. Even better, it was the truth. If she needed someone to hack a crazy zombie to pieces, Damian was her Viking warrior man.

She gave him one last squeeze, although her arms only just fit around his waist. "Come on, we need to get home before the sun rises."

"The sun will not rise for hours yet," Damian murmured as Anita moved away from him, back toward her gear.

"I know that, but I need to get home and get some sleep." She had almost said, _feed the ardeur_ , but she tried to avoid talking about sex with Damian. He wanted her, but she wasn't exactly at the same wanting his body phase. Wasn't it wrong, to make someone who depended on you, put out like that? And even if he was feeding the ardeur for the triumvirate, channeling energy into Anita for her to distribute around again, the whole thing still gave her the wiggins. "Plus, I told Dawn I'd talk with her today, and she's gone from work by five."

"Dawn... the young Summers girl?" Damian asked, curiously in his voice.

"Yeah." Anita frowned. "You know, Jean-Claude was weird around her. Do you know what's up with that?"

She watched as Damian licked his lips, something he only did when he was nervous. "I believe it had something to do with her family."

"You know what this is about," Anita said incredulously. "What is it with our secretary that is making all the vampires in this town go all laconic?" Annoyed, she reached out and broke the protective circle she had created around the grave.

The moment the circle was gone, Anita was knocked to the ground, the wind pushed out of her lungs as sure as if she had been thrown into a wall.

"Anita!" Damian shouted. A heartbeat later he was at her side, helping her to sit up. "What is it?"

As soon as Anita had enough air, she gasped, "There's something out there, something big." She concentrated on breathing around the pain, but the pain was only metaphysical. Her body wasn't hurt.

Concentrating, Anita built up her mental shields again. As she did so, the overwhelming nature of ... whatever it was, receded.

"I don't sense anything, do we need to get inside?" Damian asked, scanning the graveyard. He had one arm around Anita's shoulders and the other was hovering near his boot and the long knife she knew he had secured there.

Anita shook her head. "It's not that kind of big," she gulped. "Let's get back to the car, I need to get out of here."

She let Damian help her to her feet, which told her more than anything how shaken she was. One hand carried her zombie bag and the other held her Browning and its nice silver bullets, on the quick walk across the grave yard to the jeep. _That's one of the nice things about Damian,_ Anita thought fleetingly, _he's not much for the useless chit-chat in situations like these._

They were almost at the car when Anita's cell phone rang, making her jump. Damian grabbed the zombie bag from her hand so she could dig the phone out of her jacket pocket. "Hello?" she asked, still moving toward the jeep.

"Anita, thank God."

"Larry?" They made it to the vehicle and Damian moved to unlock the doors. "What's up?"

"I didn't know who else to call," Larry babbled, panic in his voice. "It came after us, me and Tammy, and I didn't know what to do--"

"Larry, calm down!" Larry never panicked. Anita slid behind the wheel and did up her seatbelt before starting the car. Damian was already in the passenger seat. "Tell me what happened. Are you okay? What about Tammy?"

There was shaky breathing on the other end of the line. "We were at home, and Tammy was mad at me, just like you said she'd be, and we were fighting, them something came for us, it came in the windows and ... it wanted me, Anita, it wanted to take me."

"Larry, where are you?" Anita demanded. She hated driving while talking on the cell, it distracted her.

"St. Bridget's on Union Street."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Is there anyone there?"

"The priests, and Tammy and me. She called Dolph, I think."

"Larry, what was after you?" Anita took a corner a bit too wildly, and her tires screeched. She made herself drive more carefully. She wouldn't be able to help anyone if she was hurt or dead.

"Evil, Anita." Larry's voice wavered. "I've never felt anything so evil."

"I'll be there soon, Larry. Be careful." Anita threw the phone over to Damian and took another corner.

"Don't mind me, but aren't you driving too fast?" Damian asked after a minute.

Anita didn't answer. Whatever had reached for her at the graveyard... was it connected to what happened to Larry? She had felt evil before, had tasted it, in Tennessee when a real demon, had tried to eat her and Richard's mom, Charlotte.

What she had felt tonight in the graveyard tasted just as evil.

"Anita, answer me."

"There's something out there, Damian, something bad. It came for me and it was after Larry."

"What are you going to do?"

Anita had no idea. "Pray, maybe."

* * *

Anita stopped the car before she crossed onto church property and told Damian to go home. "If I drive you onto holy ground, you may go up in flames."

"I don't want to leave you unprotected," he protested.

Anita took a deep breath. He was not going to like what she was about to do, in any way. "Damian, I'm ordering you to go home."

He jerked back as if he had been burned. "Fine," he muttered as he tore off the seatbelt and scrambled out of the car.

"I don't want to you to get hurt," she continued, softly, under her breath. She wondered if he heard her before he slammed the jeep door shut.

She waited until he took to the air before putting the car in gear and driving slowly up the drive to the church's front door. Already, a handful of cop cars were parked around, their red and blue lights bright in the pre-dawn darkness.

Zerbrowski was waiting for her when she stumbled out of her car. "And here I was, thinking you'd have better things to do than grace us with your presence."

Anita glared at him. "Larry and Tammy are in trouble, I'm here," she shot back. "Got a problem with that?"

Zerbrowski shook his head, all of the humor chased from his face. "None at all." He kicked at the gravel on the path, lit up by headlights. "I've never seen Tammy so scared, Anita, never. "

A shudder ran down Anita's spine. Her skin had been crawling since the graveyard. "Where are they?"

"In the church, up near the candles at the alter," Zerbrowski said, leading Anita toward the door. They passed several cops, some of whom Anita knew, some she did not.

"How did they end up here? What happened?"

"As far as I can get out of Tammy, the evil thing tried to eat Larry's soul."

"That's pretty melodramatic, isn't it?" Anita interrupted.

"Yeah, and you know Tammy. She understates at best. She told me that the big evil went for Larry, and she threw up some protective circles. Then it tried for them both. They made it to the car and drove to the closest holy place, being this church."

"I don't understand this week at all," Anita said as they climbed the steps to the main church hall. "First Jamison, then Duraey, then--"

Anita slammed headfirst into a barrier at the open church door and fell backwards on the steps.

Zerbrowski stopped dead, just inside the door. "What just happened?"

Anita dragged herself to her feet. "I don't know," she said softly. She walked up to the open door again and slowly reached out to entranceway.

Her eyes told her there was nothing there, but her fingers touched a cool wall, like stone. She ran her hand across the width of the open door, from the warm wood lintel on one side, across the not-there stone to the other side.

"Anita..." Zerbrowski came back through the door, as easy as could be.

"Shut up," Anita ordered. Panic was pounding in her chest and she was breathing a bit too fast.

Never before had anything like this happened to her at a church. The barrier felt like stone, immovable. Jean-Claude had once described to her what it was like for a vampire without an invitation, unable to enter a house. _It feels like rock, ma petite, miles of rock that you cannot dig through, even through you can see the other side of that door not inches away,_ he had said.

 _God's not keeping me out of a church, it's not happening,_ Anita thought frantically. Her emotions, already strung out a bit too taught, snapped, and she kicked at the open entryway, hard. Her foot bounced off the empty air as if she had kicked a tombstone.

All the other voices had fallen silent around them. Anita took a quick glance around and saw that everyone was watching her. Some looked confused, some looked upset, and a few even looked smug.

It was the smugness that got to her, twisted the knife a little bit deeper. She backed away from the entrance to the church, her hands clenching, aching to hold her gun or a knife or something. Anything.

Heavy footsteps came up beside her, and out of the corner of her eye, Anita saw Dolph come up along side Zerbrowski.

She didn't want to look at him, didn't want to see if there was pity on his face. Or worse, contempt.

 _What could I expect?_ she thought. _The way I've been living, is it any wonder God abandoned me?_

The second the thoughts formed in her head, a shock ran through her, as if a splash of cold water landed on her. That wasn't her thought. Something else was putting words into her mind.

Eyes wide, Anita looked up at Dolph. There wasn't any pity in his face, nor contempt. He was gazing down at her with sorrow in his eyes.

Anita whipped around to look out at the dark night. She couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but now that she concentrated on it, she could feel the continued presence of whatever evil had been around her at the graveyard. She reached out once again to the open door. Her fingers touched the cold barrier again. On the surface, it felt innocuous, but she tried again, reaching deeper. The barrier seemed to tremble slightly, and Anita realized that the evil behind her was also in front of her, blocking her from crossing into the church.

"Anita..." Dolph started, his voice heavy.

"Hold on," Anita demanded, still straining with all of her metaphysical might to get a sense of what was out there.

"What are you going to do?" Dolph asked. Anita realized he was echoing Damian's words from the car, and when she remembered her answer, a weight lifted from her heart. She knew what to do.

She pulled her silver cross out from under her shirt, on its long sturdy chain, and wrapped it up in her palm. "Pray," she answered Dolph absently, then closed her eyes.

Unlike a lot of her prayers, there were no specific words or request. She turned all of her despair and fear and terror inside out, reaching deep inside and at the same time way, way out, asking for hope. Needing safety and guidance.

Murmuring voices surrounded her, uncertain, panicking, as the light began to glow. Even through her closed eyelids, the light grew. And as the light grew, the tension in the air eased. "God," Anita said, certain now, "Bless us with your grace."

Everything exploded silently into pure, white light. Anita opened her eyes to the shine of a thousand captive stars. Many of the cops had their little silver crosses out, glowing in the darkness, pushing the darkness back. Inside the church, the large cross on the alter was pure light, filling the room and pushing out the windows into the dark. The light did not hurt Anita's eyes, even through she had never seen a cross glow so brightly before.

With the light came a feeling of grace. That grace chased away the lingering dread in the dark, until the night was soft again, full of the crisp, clean winter chill.

The glow from the crosses faded, gradually.

Dolph was staring at Anita, a completely blank expression on his face. It was as if he didn't know what to do with his face.

Whatever had happened made Anita all giddy. She restrained herself from giving Dolph a big hug, and instead smiled up at him. "Are Tammy and Larry inside the church?" she asked softly.

All Dolph did was nod.

Once again, Anita walked up to the church door, but this time she passed through the doors without so much as a catch.

She drifted down the center aisle of the church, toward the large alter at the front, where Tammy was sitting on the steps. A lot of the prayer-buzz had worn away by the time Anita reached the alter. "How's it going, Tammy?"

Tammy laughed, high and nervous. "Oh, just great," she said. "A demon tries to eat Larry, then chases both of us in here, then it's you of all people who manages to call on God to chase it away. It's just the best day ever." She buried her head in her hands.

Anita let the comment pass. She wasn't exactly Tammy's friend. The witch was a Follower of the Way, Christianity's answer to Wicca. Most of them were more hard-core than the right-wingers, as if the fact that they were magical meant they had to be more Christian than the rest.

No, Anita was Larry's friend, and that's why she was there. Larry was sitting a few feet away from his wife on the steps, looking scared and uncertain, eyes wider than normal.

Anita and glared meaningfully at Larry and jerked her head toward Tammy. He shook his head slightly, which only made Anita repeated her motion. She wanted Larry to get over there and comfort his own wife. Anita's experience with freaked-out pregnant Christian witches was rather low, and she wasn't keen on starting.

Larry edged over slightly until he was sitting next to Tammy, and gently laid his arm over her shoulder. She gradually relaxed into him.

Okay. Anita settled cross-legged onto the ground. "So what chased you in here tonight?"

Larry swallowed hard, his freckles standing out alarmingly against his pale skin. "We were at home, and were having a fight about something. Then ... I don't know how to describe it. Something just came for me. It reached out for me."

"Did you see what it was?" Dolph asked from the front pew, only a few feet from the steps.

Larry shook his head. "There wasn't anything there, nothing I could see. But, you know when you're in the dark and you can feel that you're not alone? It was like that."

Tammy shuddered again, and Larry let his hand drift down the side of her body to her belly, where at six months Tammy's pregnancy was quite visible.

"Then what?" Anita prodded gently.

"Tammy pulled me back, did some magic thing, like one of our protective circles, you know, at work?" Larry looked up at Anita, willing her to understand. "But it kept battering at the circle, wanting in. I didn't know what to do. Tammy got us to the car and told me to drive here. I did, and it followed us. We ran into the church and it couldn't come in. Was it waiting out there in the dark?" Larry asked, eyes wide.

"I think so," Anita responded. "I felt something in the graveyard, once I lowered the protective circle from my last zombie, and it was the same here."

"How did you do it?" Tammy asked, bringing her head up.

"It was the same kind of protective circle as always," Anita said.

"No, I don't mean that." Tammy brushed the hair back out of her face. "How did you make the crosses glow like that?"

The question seemed to hang in the air, and Anita realized that there were a lot more cops hanging around than she had first realized. "I just prayed."

"For what?" Tammy pressed, a wildness in her eyes.

"For God to bless us in this place," Anita said flatly. She held Tammy's eyes until Dolph started asking Larry some more questions.

Tammy looked away first.

* * *

The questioning carried on until the early-morning light began to creep in the eastern windows. The cops were no closer to figuring out what had gone after Larry and Tammy than when they started.

Zerbrowski and Tammy started arguing about something work-related, and Anita took the opportunity to pull Larry off to the side.

"What do you think it is?" Larry asked, still so very pale.

Anita pushed the sleeves of her jacket up a bit, an unnecessary motion, but she had been full of excess energy since the cross incident. "I'm not sure what it was, but it's too big a coincidence. Something goes after you and me in the same night? Jamison loses his zombie a few days ago? Charles almost lost his on the fourth, and Manny on the sixteenth, the same day as that guy in California. The fact that there's an animator missing the entire time, one who John Burke trained, is too much to be a coincidence."

Anita was staring up at the cross on the alter and almost missed the expression on Larry's face. "What do you mean, Manny almost lost his zombie on the sixteenth?" he asked cautiously.

"It was in his progress report, Manny almost lost control over an eighty-year-old zombie that night," Anita said. "He didn't think much of it at the time, because he got it back right away. Same thing with Charles on the fourth. Why do you ask?"

"Because I also almost lost my zombie on the sixteenth," Larry said quietly.

"You what?" Anita exclaimed. Several heads turned in their direction. "Why the hell didn't you tell me? For that matter, why didn't you put something like that in your report?"

"I did!" Larry replied defensively. "It's in that whole big section under 'unusual occurrences' in the paperwork. You know, the one that's normally blank? I didn't tell anyone because it didn't happen again. I just thought I was tired or something."

"There was nothing in your reports from that night about that," Anita argued. "I looked through all three of your reports and there was nothing."

"I raised four zombies that night, not three."

Anita and Larry stared at each other. "The file wasn't there yesterday afternoon," Anita said. "I asked Dawn to put all the files in my office when she was done with them, but it wasn't in there."

"She had the files on her desk the day before yesterday," Larry said, unease in his eyes. "I asked her what it was about and she said she was filing and stuff."

"It was rather sudden that she came to work for us wasn't it?" Anita said, shaking her head. The uncertainty over the whole matter was coalescing into more familiar anger.

"Anita, you don't know that she had anything to do with this," Larry said. He didn't sound conceived.

"Maybe not, but don't you think it's a little bit much for a key file to be missing the day before some big evil comes after you?" Anita asked.

"Maybe it was misfiled?"

Anita pulled out her cell phone. "We'll see," she said grimly as she dialed the Animators Inc. office.

While Anita was waiting for someone to pick up the phone, Zerbrowski came over to the animators. "Tammy wants to go home," he said to Larry.

"Sure, I'll--"

"No, she wants to go to her parents' house," Zerbrowski interrupted.

Larry clenched his jaw. "And does she want me there?" he said sharply. Zerbrowski didn't respond. "Can you take her ?" Larry asked.

"Sure thing," Zerbrowski responded, looking uncomfortable.

Someone finally answered the AI phone. "Animators Inc., how may I help you?"

Instead of the young female voice Anita had been expecting, it was a young, exhausted male voice. "Craig? Is that you? Why are you still at work?"

"Anita, hi. Dawn didn't come in this morning and I've been helping Mr. Burke with something," Craig replied.

"Dawn didn't come in this morning?" Anita repeated. This just kept getting worse. "Let me talk to John."

Craig knew better than to argue with Anita when she used that tone of voice. John came on the phone a few seconds later. "Anita, what is it?" he asked.

"First, is Craig right? Did Dawn not come in?"

"No, she's not here. No call, either," John said, sounding annoyed. "Did you just call to ask about the bloody secretary?"

"Of course not," Anita snapped. "Something attacked Larry last night, and it tried to keep me out of a church. Now Larry tells me that one of his reports is gone, from when he almost lost control of his zombie on the sixteenth, and that Dawn was looking at it the day before yesterday."

"Hold on a second," John said. Muffled voices sounded on the other end of the line, then John was back. "I've been looking over all the files from the last month, ever since Francois went missing, and I didn't see that report from Larry. It's not in anyone's office, either, I made sure of that."

"So Dawn either had it or destroyed it?"

"Why would she do something like that?"

"I'm going to find out." Anita jerked Zerbrowski's rumpled notebook from his hand and uncapped his pen. "Go into Bert's office and get Dawn's home address."

"What are you going to do with it?" John demanded.

"I'm going over there to find out what the hell she did with that report."

* * *

Anita double checked the address John had given her with the number on the door, then firmly pressed the doorbell.

She had passed anger and had settled into a cold fury. Something came after her and Larry, and Dawn must have some role in all of it. It was too much of a coincidence that she had taken the most important file, one that could totally change how Anita looked at things, out of the office the day before Anita needed it.

What had the girl wanted to talk about with her yesterday, anyway?

Anita heard rapid footsteps, then the door was flung open.

"Dawn?" the woman asked breathlessly. The hope on her face died when she saw Anita standing there, alone.

 _This just keeps on getting stranger and stranger,_ Anita thought. "I'm looking for Dawn Summers," she said.

The woman's shoulders slumped. "She's not here," she said wearily. "We don't know where she is."

"My name is Anita Blake," Anita started, pulling out her federal marshal's badge. The woman looked surprised.

"You work with Dawn, right?" she said.

"Yes, I do. May I come in?"

The woman stood aside, and let Anita pass over the threshold before guiding her into the kitchen.

An ill-looking younger woman was sitting at the table, bent over a mug of coffee. Beside her was a teenage boy, a worried expression on his face.

What had happened?

"I'm Karen Carroll, Dawn's aunt. That's Barry and Alice." Karen paused. "Why are you here, exactly?"

A few years before, Anita would have spouted off with whatever unsupported accusation she had, but Jean-Claude and Asher's subtlety had rubbed off on her a little. "There is a file we need for an extremely important case at work, and Ms. Summers was the last person to have it," Anita said. "When I heard she didn't show up for work today, we assumed she was ill and I came by to ask her about it."

"Was it about the rampaging zombie?" the boy at the table asked, perking up.

"Barry!" his mother admonished. "Ms. Blake, you'll have to forgive him, he's a bit overexcited."

"It's okay," Anita said. "Did Dawn talk to you a lot about the zombie attack, Barry?"

Surprised to be included in the conversation, Barry shook his head. "No, not any more than with Mom or Dad. All I know is that she was on the phone for like an hour with that guy from New York the night after the zombie attack, and she was always putting things in her notebook."

Guy from New York? Notebook? Noticing Karen's expression, Anita tried to force a smile onto her face. "Do you expect Dawn soon? I need to speak with her."

Taking a deep breath, Karen replied, "Dawn didn't come home last night."

Already thinking the girl had skipped town, Anita made herself exhale slowly and asked, "Do you expect her back?"

"I hope so," Karen replied. There was genuine worry on her face, and it was that expression that finally dug under Anita's rage, stopped her thoughts.

"How do you mean?"

"Dawn went out for her twenty-first birthday party last night. She never came home."

"It's not possible she, um, went home with somebody?" Anita asked, trying to be careful of everyone's sensibilities, at the same time thinking that she didn't have any time for this.

Karen and Barry exchanged a look, then together looked at the blonde Alice, who was still hunched over her coffee cup. "Alice put Dawn in a cab because she was drunk and then went back into the club," Barry said flatly. "All we know is Dawn never showed up here."

"Okay, back it up." Anita put her hands up. "Why doesn't someone tell me the story from the beginning?"

Alice shifted in her seat, finally meeting Anita's glare. "We were going to take Dawn to a club, you know, twenty-one and all," the girl said weakly. "Me and Jennifer took her there, and were there for a while, then Dawn said she needed to go home so I took her outside for her to catch a cab."

"Was she intoxicated? Did you catch the number of the cab?" Anita asked, frowning.

Alice ducked her head back down again. "I didn't exactly see her into the cab," she said faintly.

"Then what did you do?" Anita snapped. Her only lead on all the recent preternatural crap, and it was going up in smoke.

"I went back inside. But there was this lady, Mary, who was going to get a cab herself and I left Dawn with her."

Anita ground her teeth. "Who's this Mary?"

"I don't know, she was just some lady outside the club."

"And then what did you do?" Anita asked.

"I went back inside to catch the rest of Justin's act. Jennifer and I stayed another hour."

Anita started to ask what club they were at, when something Jason had said to her the previous day came back to mind. He had been trying to entice her to watch his act at Guilty Pleasures.

And his stage name was Justin. Damn.

Resisting the urge to sigh, Anita asked, "Were you at Guilty Pleasures?"

Wide-eyed, Alice nodded.

"Can I use your phone?" Anita asked, turning to Karen. She hesitated.

"In case Dawn calls..."

"Right." Anita pulled her cell phone out.

Just her luck. The only person who knew what happened to Larry's file had vanished from in front of Jean-Claude's club.

* * *

The first call she made was to her own house. Micah answered on the third ring.

"Micah, it's Anita. Is Nathaniel there?"

"Yeah, one second," Micah said. "Are you doing okay? Damian came home in a huff. He said something about Larry?"

"It's okay for now. I'm fine and so's Larry, but I need to talk to Nathaniel."

"Let me wake him up."

There was a moment of silence. Anita had enough time to wonder how her two guys slept when she wasn't there between them, before Nathaniel's sleepy voice came over the line.

"Anita?"

"Nathaniel, sorry to wake you up."

"S'okay."

"You were at work last night, right?"

Nathaniel's voice suddenly got a lot more alert. "Is this about Dawn?"

Anita was momentarily speechless. "How did you know that?" she sputtered when she finally found her voice.

"Look, it was Jean-Claude's idea, and I didn't see any harm in it--"

"Nathaniel, stop." Anita waited until the phone was silent. "What was Jean-Claude's idea?"

"To ask Dawn up on stage to dance  for part of the act."

"What part of the act?" Anita found herself asking. "Wait, no, I don't care. So you saw her? Was she drunk?"

"Drunk? No, she looked pretty alert."

"How long after your act did Jason go on?"

"Maybe twenty minutes. What does this have to do with Dawn?"

Anita pushed her hair back from her face with her free hand. "She's missing. Her cousin said that just after Jason's act started, Dawn was so drunk she was getting ill. The cousin left her outside the club to catch a cab, but she never came home."

"Oh." Nathaniel was quiet for a moment. "I think you need to talk to Gregory."

"Why?"

"Jean-Claude had some vampire business to deal with, and so he sent Gregory to apologize on his behalf just after my set was over. Greg talked to Dawn, maybe a few minutes before Jason started."

"Right. Thanks."

"Are you okay?" Nathaniel asked, changing subject abruptly.

"What?"

"You've been running around all night, right? You fed the ardeur just before you left home last night, but if you don't eat something soon, you could get weak."

"Yes, mother," Anita said irritably.

"I only meant... I'm sorry," Nathaniel responded, sounding wounded.

Damn it. How did she always say the wrong thing when he was just trying to help? "No, it's fine, really. I promise. And thank you."

"You're welcome," Nathaniel said.

Micah's voice came back over the line. "Anita, what's wrong?"

"A whole pile of stuff. Where is Gregory staying these days, anyway?"

"Over at Stephen's place. Is this pard business?"

"No, I don't think so. I'll let you know if that changes, okay?"

"Okay. Take care of yourself." Micah hung up the phone.

* * *

A quick phone call to Gregory confirmed Nathaniel's impression that Dawn wasn't at all drunk, only a few minutes before Jason's set began. "The bartender gave her a glass of wine when I got over there, but she smelled sober. If anything, she seemed to be thinking too hard," the wereleopard said.

"She didn't indicate about what?" Anita asked, not getting her hopes up.

"Not unless it was about your boyfriends. She asked about them, you know."

Anita let it go. "Call me if you think of anything else," she said before she hung up.

If it was later in the day, she could continue with her phone calls, but the next person she needed to talk to was currently lying in an extra-large coffin somewhere in the city. As the head of security at Guilty Pleasures, Buzz the vampire would know anything that there was to be known.

"Ms. Blake?"

Anita shook her head and looked up. "Yes, Ms. Carroll?"

The woman was frowning at Anita. "Why are you really here?"

"I told you--"

Karen's frown deepened. "Did you really come out here to ask for a file?"

The rage in Anita chest bubbled back up again. "Ms. Carroll, you need to understand my position," Anita said coldly. "Dawn came to work for us on Monday. That night, Jamison Clark, an animator at the firm, lost control of his zombie. Over the following three days, Dawn was digging through our files, asking questions on zombies and the like. Last night, something tried to attack another of the animators at our firm, the same animator whose files Dawn last had her hands on. The facts do point to some unpleasant conclusions."

Instead of getting angry, as Anita had expected, Karen just shook her head. "I understand how you came to that conclusion, but you are completely wrong about Dawn."

"Then enlighten me." Anita leaned back against the counter.

Karen took a deep breath. "Dawn's taking a degree in demonology, asking questions about this stuff is what she does. And I'm the one who suggested that she interview at Animators Inc., after your receptionist Mary told me she was headed out of town for a while. Dawn has nothing to do with your rogue zombie."

Anita let out a slow breath. "One of us is right, Ms. Carroll, but either way, we need to figure out where Dawn went."

"Agreed," Karen replied, feeling in her voice.

"Does she have family out of town she may call?"

Karen walked across the kitchen to an open briefcase on the kitchen table. "Her sister is based in Portland now, but she's often away on business. I have her cell number here."

"What about parents?" Anita asked while Karen wrote down the number.

"Her mother is dead, and her father is out of the picture," Karen replied, handing Anita a slip of paper.

"I need to see her things. She may still have some of our files that we need," Anita said firmly. If she could avoid having to get a warrant, it would be much more efficient.

"Sure, anything if it will help us find her." The hint of desperation was back in Karen's voice. It made Anita wonder if anyone would have been so worried if she disappeared, when she was twenty-one.

* * *

The Animators Inc. files were not hard to find. In fact, they were lying on top of the neatly made bed in a pile.

Anita headed straight for the files, plural. Larry's missing file was right on top. Anita flipped through it to make sure all the pages were there. Then she turned her attention to the other files, the ones they hadn't even realized were missing.

Six folders in all, three of John Burke's zombies and three of hers. The dates didn't mean anything to her, only that they were from before Francois disappeared.

"Why did she take these?" Anita asked herself. She put the files back on the bed and took in the rest of the room.

The room felt like a guest room, but Dawn had left some of her things around. Anita recognized the dress Dawn had worn to the office the day before, draped over a chair by the desk. The desk looked like the most used part of the room.

Karen had come into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, watching Anita. "What are you looking for?"

"A clue. Anything," Anita said absently. There was an unframed picture propped up against the clock on the desk, and Anita picked it up. There were three women in the picture, a teenage Dawn, another young woman, and a woman who closely resembled Karen. "Dawn is your sister's child?"

Karen nodded. "That's Joyce and Buffy in that picture. It was taken few months before Joyce died."

Anita put the photo back down and turned her attention to the papers on the desk. "Does Dawn come to visit you often?" she asked as she rifled through the papers. They looked like print-outs of news reports.

"No, this is the first time she's come here since she was a baby. She was visiting us after heading through New York and Cleveland, when her funds ran out. She stayed for a while until her sister could reimburse her."

"Funds ran out how?" The print-outs were nothing Anita didn't already know, mostly in nation-wide zombie activity, going back a few years. But she wondered how Dawn had pulled them together. More importantly, why.

"Her sister and friends needed to buy something expensive, something about someone's life being on the line. She didn't explain much, but I could tell that it was very important to Dawn."

"What, like a ransom or something?" That might explain Dawn being missing, if someone had tried for ransom against a friend. Maybe they thought it would work again.

"I don't know," Karen said helplessly.

Anita turned her full attention to the small red-covered notebook on the desk. She had seen it on Dawn's desk at work the previous day. Maybe that was what Barry had been referring to.

The entries in the journal, which doubled as a diary, were dated, which made it easier. The first entry in the notebook was dated more than a month previous.

> Good news. Willow stopped the end of the world, again. I'm taking this as my early Hanukkah gift from tiny Jewiccan Santa. Downside, no more money for me for a while. At least Buffy has the Initiative-lite gig to fund her lattes.

Anita felt a headache forming behind her right eye, just inside her temple. End of the world?

She flipped a few more pages. The entries on the fourth and the sixteenth were innocuous, expressing boredom about not working. Anita found an interesting entry on the seventeenth.

> Giles finally emailed the information I was asking about on the Mototh demon. And I was right, 'Mototh' is phonetically similar to 'Toth' for a good reason. Mototh means kin to Toth (who made Xander into the Doublemint twins when I was fourteen: See Giles's Watcher journals for the drab details.)
> 
> Mototh also uses nifty tools, and was last sighted near Madrid in the late eighteenth century. No Slayers around then to kick its ass, but the Church had its demon hunter squad (Initiative version 1.0?) chase it down. They say they killed it, but then they all went mad and the Church had them all assassinated.
> 
> Its pattern of attack was to kill its prey with something the prey carried, so hunters were gutted with their own knives, painters staked with their brushes, and so on.
> 
> Its kill motivation was usually curiosity, making it more unpredictable than a usual demon.

There was a note in a different colored pen, as if Dawn had gone back later and added the note along the margin.

> As if demons needed to be more confusing. File this one under Chaos: What can't it do?

Anita rubbed her temple. Why was Dawn waiting for information from someone on this demon? Wasn't she taking a year off from school?

Conscious that she was wasting time, Anita moved to the entry on the twenty-second.

> Rampaging zombie: What caused it? Not much is known about zombies and the possible complications. Ask Giles and Willow if they have any ideas. Call Slayer-Central and ask them? Robin might have a few clues, being all Watcher-raised.
> 
> Most important point: Will it happen again?
> 
> I hate zombies. You'd think the prodigal-Buffy-returns party would have taught me that.

"There's nothing wrong with zombies," Anita said aloud, feeling a bit defensive. She rifled through to the entry from the previous day.

> I think I have it. What was it about Jamison that caused him to lose his zombie?
> 
> Outside influence. No doubt.
> 
> Things to take into consideration: Charles, Larry and Manny all wrote in their reports that they felt something making them lose control of the zombies on the days I mentioned yesterday. I remembered the conversation I had with Anita (less conversation, more her trying to herd me out of her office) when she said that of all six animators at the office, her and John were the two most powerful animators. That leaves the other four, the ones who almost lost their zombies, as the weaker ones.
> 
> I checked out John Burke from New Orleans. His track record is patchy, a dabbler in the darker side of things. He could be properly classed as a necromancer. And from what I've discerned from reading Anita's files and from word on the street, she's the most powerful necromancer in a very long time.
> 
> So why were she and John spared? Bad guys usually try for the more powerful ones, mostly because they're stupid. But here, either the BB wasn't trying, or couldn't make it past them.
> 
> In their reports I read last night (and forgot to take back into work: am dumb), I think they make their protective circles different. They can rely less on the energy from the animal's death, and more on their own power. (See Anita's raising of Gordon Bennington: She used her own blood to make the circle and to make him rise.) Maybe that difference somehow makes the Big Bad pass them by or avoid them?
> 
> Anita and John aren't targets. So why is this happening in the first place?
> 
> (Maybe the fact that John trained the missing animator, Francois... but how??)
> 
> I'm convinced that a demi-demon is behind it. Since the zombie is imbued with the energy from the sacrifice and part of the animator's energy, could the demon suck away that energy by making it go haywire?
> 
> Still waiting for Giles or Willow to get back to me on any of the Necromancers files. Doubtful I'll get them. The Watchers Council and the Necromancers weren't on good terms due to that whole Prague incident. Would be nice to know if they ever experienced something like this, though.
> 
> Now, off to my twenty-first birthday party. Alice won't tell me where we're going, which is really too bad. I need to be alert when I talk to Anita tomorrow. She's probably going to rip me a new one for not telling her this before. Happy Birthday to me.

That was the last entry in the notebook.

Anita's head was reeling. She hadn't even considered why she and John hadn't been affected by whatever it was. And Watchers? Necromancers? Were those code words? Anita had never heard of a necromancers' organization, and what the hell did a watcher watch, anyway?

"Did you learn anything?" Karen asked when Anita closed the notebook.

Anita shook her head, wincing as she did it. Her headache was getting bigger. "I think so. I'm afraid so." Anita picked up the notebook. "Why didn't she tell me any of this?"

She knew the answer to that, of course. She had been so eager to leave the office the previous day, and to avoid talking to Dawn over what she had thought was inconsequential.

"I'm taking these things with me." Anita told Karen. "Dawn's been working on the same thing I have and I need to take her ideas into consideration." She hesitated. "You should probably call the cops. Dawn hadn't been gone long enough for a real missing person's report, but tell them she's been working at Animators Inc. and that it may have something to do with the rampaging zombie. I'll give you the number of the sergeant at RPIT."

Anita scooped up Dawn's notebook, the print-outs and the AI files, and trailed downstairs after Karen. She was halfway through giving the woman Zerbrowski's phone number when the phone rang.

Karen carefully picked up the phone. "Hello?" she asked tentatively.

Anita finished scribbling the number on a scrap of paper while Karen listened.

"Hold on a moment." Karen lowered the phone and held her hand over the mouthpiece. "It's a friend of Dawn's from New York, what should I tell them?"

"New York?" Anita asked. Barry had said that Dawn had talked with someone from New York the night after the zombie attack. "Give me the phone." Karen handed the phone to Anita. "Hello?"

"Happy birthd-- wait, who is this?" the person on the other end of the line asked. The voice sounded young, female.

"Anita Blake, and you are?"

"I'm Willow. Where's Dawn?"

"She hasn't tried to get in touch with you?"

"No. Where is she?" Willow demanded, her voice hardening.

Anita flipped through Dawn's notebook, to the last entry. It said that Giles and Willow were looking into the Necromancer files. This Willow probably knew what Dawn had been doing. "We're not sure where Dawn is. She wrote in her notebook that you were looking into something regarding zombies?"

There was an intense silence on the other end of the line. "You're that Anita Blake," Willow finally said.

"What are you talking about?" It always made Anita nervous when people recognized her name, especially in that tone of voice.

"Nothing. What happened to Dawn, and why are you there?"

Anita explained, as briefly as she could. "Do you know of anyone who she'd get in touch with?"

"No. Just a second." There was a scratching on the other end of the line, and then Anita heard a muffled, "Giles!"

"Willow... Willow!" Anita tried to get the other woman's attention back.

"What?"

"I haven't got the time for any of this. Can you tell me if you came up with anything on what Dawn asked you about?"

There was another hesitation. "No, nothing. Do you have any idea what took Dawn?"

"No."

"Then put Dawn's aunt back on the line."

"Fine." More annoyed than ever, Anita handed the phone back to Karen, and slid the slip of paper with Zerbrowski's number on it along the counter. "Call him when you're done," she said to Karen.

Karen nodded before turning to the phone. Anita shook her head and let herself out of the house.

Back at her jeep, Anita dumped Dawn's papers onto the passenger seat and slammed the door. She hung her head for a moment. She felt like she was running as fast as she could, but the answers were getting farther and father away.

 _Time, time, not enough time,_ Anita thought bitterly. She doubted that anyone had jumped Dawn outside of Guilty Pleasures. Jean-Claude was fanatical about  security around his clubs, conscious of the public relations nightmare if one of his drunken patrons were accosted by anyone, undead or not.

She needed to talk to Jean-Claude, but it was barely ten in the morning. He wouldn't be awake until at least noon.

Two hours... Not enough time to sleep, and hardly enough time to get to the police station. Anita pushed the weariness away. She would have time enough to sleep after they found Dawn and stopped whatever evil tried to eat Larry.

She just hoped she was in time.

* * *


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

Dawn was dreaming.

What else could it be? she thought, as she stood in the middle of Revelo Drive, staring up at the old house in SUnnydale, bright in the sunshine. The leaves on the trees were bright green, waving in the breeze. Nothing else moved, no cars, no people, no birds. No noise except for the leaves.

"Hello?" Dawn said tentatively. Her voice was swallowed up by the leaves, and the whole world quivered.

There was something out there.

Dawn took a step forward, then another, then another until she was running along the street, running as fast as she could to get away.

Her chest hurt with the running, but she didn't stop until she was back in front of her house, bright in the sunshine.

"Am I late for dinner?" Dawn said, confused. This time, the leaves didn't want her words.

There was movement on the sidewalk. Slowly Dawn turned.

It was her mother, carrying a large purse in one hand and Buffy's severed head in the other. "Hello, dear, did I keep you waiting?"

Dawn licked her lips. There was a foul taste in her mouth that she couldn't quite place. "Where have you been? I was worried."

Joyce smiled that Mom smile that Dawn remembered, and turned up the walk to the house. "Your father and I were playing bridge with Mr. Giles and Willow. They make such a lovely couple, don't they?"

"I guess, if you're into chimney-sweeps," Dawn replied as she trailed her mother up the steps.

The door opened to allow Joyce in. "Come, Dawn, why don't we make some tea?"

As they went into the kitchen, Joyce opened the freezer and tossed Buffy's head inside. "Don't want that to spoil any more, do we?"

The kettle whistled, even though Dawn knew no one had put it on. "Mom, what did you do to Buffy?"

"Hmm?" Joyce said, looking up from digging in her purse. "Oh, she wasn't going to be there for you, and after I asked her so nicely."

"Be there for me when?" Dawn asked, her voice starting to tremble. This was too much like something else, something that had not been a dream.

"When the time comes." Joyce came around the kitchen island and put her hands on Dawn's shoulders. She smiled reassuringly. "No one will be, Dawn. Better just to give up now."

Dawn pushed her mother's hands off her shoulders and backed up until she hit the wall. "No," she said, shaking her head fiercely. "They wouldn't leave me alone."

"Of course they would," Joyce said. "You're nothing to them."

Dawn turned around and ran out of the house, hearing her mother's calls as she ran. It was dark on the street now, and Dawn ran down the sidewalk until she was at the corner, and darted out into the road. From nowhere came a car hurtling towards her. The last thing Dawn saw before it hit her was Buffy's decapitated body at the wheel.

* * *

Dawn opened her eyes, or tried to. There was something over her eyes and she couldn't see.

The thrill of adrenaline from her dream was replaced with sheer, unadulterated fear. She could feel something cold holding her wrists up near her head, and something just as cold around her ankles. The floor under her back was cold and rough and her head ached.

She tried not to move, in case anyone was there watching her. _No matter how often this happens,_ Dawn thought in disgust mixed with fear, _I always get scared. Getting scared never helped anyone._

The room was quiet, with faint sounds coming from what seemed like a long way off. _Road traffic, maybe?_ Dawn mused, her heartbeat slowing as she calmed down a bit. _Maybe if I could get out of these restraints_ \--

Something touched her knee, and Dawn involuntarily yelped and jerked against her bonds.

"Shh," a voice said. "Don't get excited, it's all right. You're all right now."

"Then take off this blindfold and let me go," Dawn said from between clenched teeth. Only then did she realized that she wasn't gagged. _At least I can bite_ , she thought bitterly.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," the voice said dreamily. It was a male voice.

Then whatever was touching her knee began to slowly slide up her thigh, under her dress. Dawn tried to kick, but the restraints held her too tightly to do any good, so she was reduced to trying to shake the thing off her leg. _Don't panic, don't panic._

A sudden hard blow to the side of her face stunned Dawn for a second, and when she gathered her wits back about her, there was a heavy weight on her legs, as if someone was straddling her thighs.

"Shh," the voice said as something soft brushed against her cheek. Dawn tried to jerk her aching head away, but to no avail. "I just want to play."

"Get off me!" Dawn exclaimed, still trying to struggle out of her restraints. This so wasn't happening. She had not been grabbed out from in front of a vampire strip bar to star in some psycho's rape fantasy.

"Yes, Isaac, do get off Ms. Summers," another, deeper, male voice said from close by.

Dawn froze again, as Isaac stopped touching her face and the pressure on her knees changed. "You said I could play," Isaac said. His voice sounded petulant and more than a little insane.

"Now, Isaac." The other man's voice bit like broken glass. Dawn involuntarily whimpered as the promise of pain brushed over her skin.

The weight lifted from Dawn's legs, and footsteps sounded across the hard floor. Dawn tried to calm her breathing, to center herself like she had practiced so many times with the Slayers, but it was impossible with the blindfold over her eyes and the cold restraints holding her arms.

She sensed movement near her, then something touched the side of her face. She jerked away. "Don't touch me," she said, low and deliberate. At least she didn't have to sound scared.

A hand grabbed her hair and pulled her head around, straining her neck to an almost painful angle. Dawn's breath stopped in her chest as she wondered if they were going to slit her throat.

From somewhere near her ear came the soft sound of metal on leather, a knife being drawn from a sheath. She had heard a similar sound thousands of times, but never had it felt so intimate.

 _What is death but the last intimate thing we do?_ Dawn thought, taking one last gulp of air. If she was going to die, she was damn well going to do it like a Summers woman.

The blindfold moved, and the thin cold edge of the metal slipped along her cheek and then pulled away, taking the cloth with it.

Dawn had to blink a few times up at the man kneeling by her head, knife in one hand and severed blindfold in the other, before she realized that she wasn't dead yet. "Oh, thank God," she said in relief, and let her head drop back to the floor.

"You may yet come to curse that choice of words, Ms. Summers," the man said. He stood up and slipped the knife back into his sheath on his belt. "Isaac, help Ms. Summers stand up, will you?"

Lying down as she was, Dawn couldn't see very well, and sensed rather than saw movement near her head. Isaac pulled on something, metal scraping on metal, and then the bonds on her hands were looser. Before Dawn could do anything more than register that fact, Isaac looped a length of chain over a large and rusty hook, then pulled on another length of chain.

Dawn's arms were almost yanked out of their sockets as the chain between the restraints on her wrists was pulled up, up until she was suspended half an inch above the ground. Looking down, she saw that a similar manacle and chain get-up secured her ankles. As the pain in her wrists settled into a sharp ache, she could feel the blood in her head pounding against where Isaac had hit her.

"Put me down!" Dawn exclaimed. If she pointed her feet, she could touch the ground with her toes. It made her feel a whole lot better. "I can stand perfectly fine."

"As you wish, Ms. Summers," said the other man, standing behind her now. "Isaac, please let Ms. Summers stand unaided."

The chain lowered until Dawn's feet hit the ground, and then kept going until her hands were at waist level. Her feet were still secured by the chain, so she wasn't going anywhere yet.

But she was standing up and she could see. She was alive and so far unhurt. Things were looking up.

It appeared that she was in an old warehouse. There were windows high up in the walls, and catwalks all around. The floor was concrete, with old crates shoved up against the walls. The main floor was surprisingly clear.

Isaac and the other man came around, into her line of view. The second guy, the one who cut her blindfold off, looked rather ordinary, a face you could see a thousand times in a crowd and never remember. He was looking at her now with a cold, dead expression in his eyes. "Where are my manners?" he said. "You may call me James."

"What do you want?" Dawn demanded, forcing herself to stand up to all of her five feet and eight inches, five ten in these shoes. _I must not slouch, must not show them that I'm about five seconds from passing out in fear_ , she thought frantically.

James smiled slightly. "Ah, yes. That is the question, is it not?" He walked closer to Dawn, but stopped just outside a painted blue circle on the concrete that Dawn had just noticed. "May I be blunt, Ms. Summers?"

Dawn did not reply. Her tummy ached and her head hurt and she was so cold and she wanted to go home but she would not, could not let him see any of that.

"I am working toward a goal, as it were, and unfortunately, my last focus... well, he exploded," James said, as mildly as if he was discussing the weather. "You are the answer to that gap. Your power is what I need, but you are not powerful enough to overwhelm my plans."

"Power for what?" Dawn was honestly confused. He couldn't mean the Key. No one knew who she was, and that whole glowing ball of energy thing was unreachable. She was just Dawn now.

James started to pace slowly before her. His movement made Dawn remember the other man in the room. Hesitantly, Dawn looked over at Isaac.

He was standing in shadows, staring at Dawn. Even knowing what he had started to do to her not five minutes before, she had to admit that he was handsome. Perfect cheekbones, soft brown eyes, dark hair framing his face. It was the eyes that stopped her. They looked pretty, but whatever was behind them... a monster stared out at her from behind those pretty eyes.

"I intend to raise a demon, Ms. Summers," James said, drawing her back from Isaac's eyes. "And you're going to help me do it."

"What makes you think that I'll help you?" Dawn asked. A fury was growing inside her. There was no way she was raising any demon, for anyone. It was against all she believed in, all she had ever fought against.

James was smiling again. A shiver ran down Dawn's spine. "Whether you are willing to help me or not, Ms. Summers, is beside the point. I raise the demon, and you are my focus."

That was the second time he had used that phrase. "How do you mean, focus?"

"Ah, yes." James stopped pacing and clasped his hands behind his back. "It's ingenious, really. The demon I wish to summon feeds on the dead, and exists in this world only in shadows. It can only take form by corrupting the body of a necromancer, but one so weak that he, as in our last case, or she, needs a sacrifice to call forth a zombie."

Dawn shook her head to clear the cobwebs, and then wished she hadn't as the headache rushed back. What James had just said didn't make any sense. Unless...

"You grabbed Francois," she breathed, eyes going wide. "You used him as a focus. But you said he..."

"Exploded, yes." James shook his head. "Quite unfortunate. It seems that he was fighting the demon. Do you know that he even tried to call for help? On each of the three nights we tried to raise the demon, to force it into his body, he managed to disrupt the animators across the country?"

Dawn's stomach dropped. It hadn't been a demon, trying to disrupt the zombies. It had been Francois trying to save himself.

James came up close to Dawn, way too close. "But no one knew, no one figured it out, and in the end, no one came."

Horror raged up in Dawn, and she wanted to lash out at him in anyway that she could. So she spat in his face.

James took a step back, an expression of disgust on his face, then he backhanded her across the face. Dawn didn't even have time to react before his next blow caught her in the stomach. She dropped to her knees and would have fallen farther had it not been for the chains on her wrists.

While she tried to gasp around the pain, the sound of chain on chain came again, and her hands were once more wretched up above her head, dragging her up.

"Ms. Summers, your melodramatic display aside, there is nothing that will save you," James said, his voice mild again. "However, if you persist in these antics, I will be forced to let Isaac subdue you."

The mentioned Isaac came to stand beside James, still looking at Dawn with those monster eyes.

"And what will he do?" Dawn asked, trying to put bravado into her voice. She winced as she spoke, realizing that James's hit had split her lip.

"He will continue what I interrupted earlier, Ms. Summers. He is quite an accomplished sorcerer; I'm sure your body will survive intact, even if your mind will not." James turned to his companion. "It is time to start the ritual."

Isaac nodded and walked to a corner of the room. Dawn's eyes followed him, even as James continued.

"Sadly, we cannot attempt the main body of the ritual until tomorrow at midnight. Until then, however, we can leave the demon with you, for it to become familiar to its new home. It got out last night and had its fun with the bone-makers, but it came back to us at sunrise."

"No, you don't understand," Dawn started to plead as Isaac came back with a pile of bones and talismans and fetishes. Even looking at the stuff made Dawn's skin crawl. The taste of evil from her dream, a taste she had only felt a few times in her life, was back.

"What don't I understand?" James asked as he watched Isaac deftly place the items inside the painted circle.

"I'm not a necromancer, not even a little one," she pleaded, all the while trying to struggle out of her bonds. It only made the metal cut deeper. "You've got the wrong person."

"You work at Animators Inc., do you not?"

"Yes, but--"

"And you are well versed in the demon rites, those of Odin?"

"I guess so, but--"

"Isaac." At James's command, Isaac leapt up, holding a small glass orb. It held grey mist that moved on its own accord. "This is a truthsayer, Ms. Summers. Quite a marvelous tool. It judges you on your own standards. Now, time for my last question, which I am sure will settle the matter." James's face was suddenly wiped clean of any emotion or feeling. "Have you ever raised the dead, Ms. Summers?"

Dawn started to say no, but then her memories came back to her. Of her phone call the previous day with Buffy.

Of raising her mother from the dead.

"No," she lied weakly.

The grey mist in the glass ball turned black, and James smiled a satisfied smile. "You are lying." He turned to walk away.

"No, wait!" Dawn screamed. "You don't understand, I'm not what you want!"

"You're expendable, Ms. Summers," James called back to her as he left. "Even if you aren't what I want, and you do die in the attempt, I rest assured knowing that Isaac at least will get to have his fun with that remains of you."

James vanished behind some boxes. Isaac placed the last talisman in place, and stepped back as the essence of the demon was called. It seeped into the air, a foul purpose that curled its way around Dawn's skin.

Dawn began to scream.

* * *


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

Anita woke abruptly to the sensation of something crashing into her. She was turning her head even before she was fully conscious, and almost fell out of her chair.

Chair?

She blinked a few times, trying to get her bearings. It sounded and smelled like the police station, but how did she get there?

Anita closed her eyes again and pushed her hair back from her face. Of course. She had gone to RPIT to see Zerbrowski after leaving Dawn Summers' house. She remembered talking to him at his desk, sitting in the very chair she was now in, but when had she fallen asleep?

"How do you feel, Blake?" Zerbrowski asked, coming around and setting a steaming cup of coffee in front of her before sitting back down in his own chair.

"Like crap." Her whole body was sore from sleeping in the chair, her headache from that morning was back and had brought a few friends. Her stomach was achingly empty, so much so that the coffee smell made her nauseous.

"I'm not surprised. From what I hear, you were awake for over twenty-two hours," Zerbrowski said, leaning back. He was staring at her with too much weight in his eyes.

"Something like that." Something was nagging at the back of her mind, something she needed to do, but she couldn't remember. "How long was I out?"

"Three hours, although how you slept through three hours of this madhouse is beyond me." Zerbrowski sighed. "And a busy three hours it has been."

"Huh?" Anita tried to gather her wits together. "You let me sleep that long?"

"Let you? You passed out on my desk while I was running that report on Dawn Summers," Zerbrowski said. "You slept through me fighting with Dolph, you slept through me reprimanding Arnet, and you slept through the movers taking out a few desks. It wasn't a matter of _let_."

Anita took a tentative sip of her coffee. It was vile, but the bitterness centered her. "Have you discovered anything more about Dawn? She hasn't turned up, has she?"

Zerbrowski shook his head, still so serious.

Slowly, Anita lowered her coffee. "What's wrong?"

"How do you know something's wrong?"

"Your face is wrong. That's not what I mean," she added when Zerbrowski raised his eyebrows. "You look like something is wrong."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you're too perceptive for your own good?" Zerbrowski asked.

Anita shook her head, then wished she hadn't. Her headache was now stabbing pain into her head. "Just tell me, Zerbrowski."

Zerbrowski stood up and started to pull on his jacket. "I'll tell you in the car. Come on."

Anita let her eyes close for a moment. She wanted to go back to sleep, but that was never an option, was it? "Where are we going?" she asked wearily as she stood and followed Zerbrowski through the RPIT office.

"A campsite near the old graveyard out by Henderson, down by the river," Zerbrowski explained as he clattered down the stairs. "The call came in two hours ago, and the State Patrol finally agreed to hand it over to us. The crime scene techs should be meeting us there. Along with the FBI and company." Zerbrowski grumbled the last part under his breath.

"What are you talking about?" Anita demanded, almost having to run to keep up with him.

Zerbrowski finally stopped when he got to his car. "The Staties think that the body is that of your missing animator, Francois Duraey."

"Is that why we're going out there?" Anita asked, shivering in the mid-day cold.

Zerbrowski shook his head and opened the passenger side door. Anita waited while he tossed the week's newspapers and coffee cups into the backseat. "We're going out there because the state police think there was magic somehow involved in his death," Zerbrowski said over his shoulder. "And because some jackass called the feds before us."

"Wait, the feds got the call before RPIT?" Anita repeated. "Whose stupid idea was that? Don't they know that's what we do?"

"That is also what the feds do," Zerbrowski contradicted as he slid over into the driver's seat. "We're local magic. We do mostly vampires and weres and the occasional naga, anything with a body, but magic, not so much." Anita barely had time to slip into the car before Zerbrowski turned the key in the ignition and put the car into gear.

"Are you upset that you got the call at all, or that you weren't first?" Anita asked. She was confused and still wasn't thinking straight. She pushed at her link with Jean-Claude, to try and figure out why, and felt the taste of hot, sweet blood in her mouth.

He was feeding on Jason. She tried to push the sensation away, but it was like touching molasses; it clung to her no matter how hard she tried.

She felt Jason's chest under her arm, hand on his chin, holding his neck exposed, and the blood sliding down her throat. She felt Jean-Claude hesitate, wonder why she was inside his head, but she already had her answer. She needed food, and soon, before bad things started happening.

She took a deep breath and told herself to calm down. Then, instead of trying to push Jean-Claude and Jason away, she fell into them, let the feeding wash over her, and coming out the other side.

She came back to herself in Zerbrowski's car. They were stopped.

"Why aren't we moving?" she asked absently, looking around. Her tongue flicked to the corner of her mouth and she was slightly surprised that there was no drying blood there for her to taste.

"Because we're at a stoplight, Blake." Zerbrowski stared at her. "Are you okay?"

She shook her head. Her headache seemed to be going away. "I need some food. Can we go through a fast-food window or something?"

"Haven't you heard a thing I've said?" Zerbrowski demanded, accelerating into the intersection once the light changed. "We're meeting some military consultants at the scene, the ones the FBI called in. We don't have time to be stopping for food."

"Trust me, Zerbrowski, it will save more time in the long run if I get some food now, as opposed to my killing and eating one of these consultants of yours," Anita snapped. The caffeine was finally hitting her bloodstream.

"You wouldn't..." Zerbrowski started, but shut his mouth when he saw the look on Anita's face. "One drive-through, on the way."

* * *

 

Two burgers, a salad and a large soda later, and Anita was feeling somewhat human again. Well, as human as she ever got.

"Are you going to eat your fries?" Zerbrowski asked as he negotiated another sharp turn on the road to the campsite.

"No, you have them." Anita slurped at the last of her Coke. "Do you know how much fat and salt and calories are in fries?"

Zerbrowski made a face. "Are you done stuffing yourself? I do have a case I need to talk to you about."

"Okay, shoot."

"So, after you passed out on my desk, Karen Carroll called about your office's secretary. Five minutes after that call came through, Dolph calls me into his office. He'd gotten a call from the Chief of Police, asking about Ms. Summers."

"Wait, how did the chief know about her?"

"Seems he got a phone call from his counterpart in New York."

"New York?" Anita's mind went back to Dawn's notes she had read that morning and the phone call from Willow. "Dawn's friend, the one who called, did I tell you about her?" Zerbrowski nodded. "She's from New York. But how would she be able to get the damn police chief to call?"

"No idea," Zerbrowski said, shoulder-checking as he merged onto a dirt road. "So you want to hear the rest of this story?"

"Probably not."

Zerbrowski ignored her. "Dolph put me on the case, but since you're our resident magical and demon expert, you're in charge. You tell us it's magic or a monster or a demon, and we let the military consultants help us out."

"Hold on a damn minute, how do I rate being a demon expert?" Anita demanded.

Zerbrowski took his eyes off the road to glare at her. "Are you always this stupid after you wake up? What about last night? And that thing in Tennessee you told me about? Or that exorcism you took part in? Or all the creepy crawlies you've taken down? If you're not an expert, Anita, we're fucked, because you're all we've got."

"Thanks for the pep talk, Zerbrowski. Remind me to keep you on speed-dial in case I ever get too comfortable with this whole self-esteem thing." Anita looked out the side window at the passing trees, trying not to panic. She was out of her depth and she knew it. Last night had been a fluke, a desperate idea. In Tennessee, it hadn't been her who had driven off the demon, not really. Sure, she had set it free, but everyone had prayed together to render it harmless. And she had only watched the exorcism, not actually helped.

Zerbrowski was silent. He slowed as the car approached a number of state patrol cars parked haphazardly across the road. A tall patrolman, in his bulky winter jacket and immaculate patrol hat, sauntered up to the driver's window. "This area's off limits," he told Zerbrowski.

Zerbrowski pulled his ID off the dashboard. "Sergeant Zerbrowski, RPIT. You called us in."

The patrolman looked at the ID, then squinted in the car at Anita. "And who's that with you, Sergeant?"

"Anita Blake."

The patrolman's eyes grew big and he took a step back from the car. "Drive right on in, sir," he said before waving at his partner to move the temporary barricade.

Anita crossed her arms over her chest, her right hand unconsciously touching her gun. "What was that all about?" she asked. She was getting tired again, and all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a few days.

"What you did last night at the church? It's been all over town on the cop grapevine," Zerbrowski said, carefully not making eye contact with Anita. "Making every cross in a mile-wide area glow like that wasn't peanuts."

Anita pushed her hair off her face and undid her seatbelt. She didn't want to talk about that. "So what are we going to do here?" she asked.

"You survey the scene, see if it's demon-related or what, and then see if you can identify the body. From what I hear, Burke was a friend of Duraey, right? If you can't ID the body, we'll get him down, but not unless we have to."

"No one wants to see the body of a friend," Anita said as she and Zerbrowski got out of the car.

They were parked on a bit of a rise, above the campsite. Anita could see the scene taped off, through the skeletal trees, but she was too far away to make out any details.

However, the most important detail was right in front of her. A bunch of patrolmen were milling around their cars, being very careful to not look at the crime scene. These were men and women who dealt daily with mangled bodies in car crashes, hunting accidents, and general mayhem. They didn't spook easily, but here they all were, as far from the body as they could get.

Anita pulled her cross out of her shirt and let it hang down on the outside of her jacket, then pulled her hair back into a ponytail so it was free of her face. After making sure she had two pairs of latex gloves in easy reach, she walked over to where Zerbrowski was huddled with an older patrolman.

They both looked up at her approach. "Federal Marshal Anita Blake, this is Sergeant Knight," Zerbrowski said. Anita held out her hand for the trooper to shake, and didn't flinch as he squeezed a little too hard.

"Marshal Blake," Knight said, looking her over. Anita just stared back. She'd been getting looks like that for a long time from cops. She was too small, too female, too magic, and not nearly white enough for this corner of Missouri. She didn't have time to let it bother her.

"So when do we get possession of the scene?" Anita asked.

Knight raised his eyebrows. "As soon as you want it, marshal. Do you want me to send my men to your station for statements, or do you want to do it here?" he asked. He got extra bonus points for asking both her and Zerbrowski the question, Anita thought.

"Send them to the station, it's too damn cold out here for them to do it properly," Zerbrowski said, pulling his scarf closer around his neck. "Who found the body?"

"One of my men, Mendoza. He's in his patrol car over there. It's his first month on the job." Knight shook his head. "Hell, I've been working these highways for over thirty years, and this is the second worst thing I've ever seen."

Anita really didn't want to know what the worst was. "I'm going to go look at the body, fresh," she said. "Can you talk to Mendoza?"

Zerbrowski nodded. "The crime scene techs should be here any minute, but we'll need to keep them off the scene until after the FBI's consultants show up."

"Would you like me to accompany you, marshal?" Knight asked, surprising Anita.

"Sure." Anita turned and headed down the slope, careful to watch her feet as she went. Falling on her ass in front of a crowd of state troopers and Zerbrowski would just be the best topper to her day.

The wind shifted as they neared the body, and Anita caught that outhouse scent that always seemed to accompany a body when the intestines had been ruptured. Glad that it wasn't summer and the heat wasn't making the body decay faster, Anita breathed through her mouth.

When they got close enough, Anita had a hard time making out what she was seeing. There was a pinkish mess all around the body, or more specifically, the back of the body. "Where's the top lateral half of the corpse?" Anita asked, voice distant. She could feel her emotions shutting down, going away, not dealing with this mess.

Knight cleared his throat. "It's, um, all around."

Anita looked down. She had stopped a foot from a glob of what looked like hamburger, but it wasn't hamburger. Not at all.

She was sort of surprised that she wasn't throwing up. "How close did your man get to the--" she gestured vaguely in the air at the body, "to that?"

"About two feet." Knight pointed at a disturbed trail through the dead leaves. "Looks like he got that far, then turned around and went back over that way. Another trooper found him dry heaving. Don't know how he managed to radio for backup, but he did."

"Why did he come here?" Anita asked, circling around the body, careful not to step on any obvious body parts. "I mean, we're out of the way, can't be seen from the highway. The campsites are closed in the winter, right?"

Knight nodded, an appraising look in his eye. "We give it to the rookies, to do a rundown on all summer spots in the winter, in case any vandalism or anything happens. Sometimes, people will abandon stolen cars around."

"So this was on a routine stop that the body was found?" Anita found a clear spot about five feet from the body and crouched down on the balls of her feet to get a closer look. "How often do you check?"

"Every few days. Mendoza will have the actual schedule, I don't know it off the top of my head."

"So he finds the body, calls for backup, vomits for a while. What happened next?"

"The backup trooper calls my direct line. I come over, take a look, and call your lieutenant straight away."

Anita tilted her head back to look at Knight. "It took you three hours to do that?"

"One," Knight shot back. "Is it my fault ya'll take so long to get over here?"

"So who called the feds?" Anita continued.

Knight pulled off his trooper hat and raked his hand over his military-short hair. "My second. That's what it says in the regs, you know. Find a body riddled with magics on state lands, call the FBI."

"That was before we had federal marshals for this sort of thing." Anita made herself stop talking and shook her head. "Just give me a minute to look around, okay?"

Knight clamped his mouth shut and turned back to stare up the hill, away from the body.

Anita stood up and concentrated. In the afternoon light, things were bright, full of colour. White winter sun splashed over the body and the dead leaves, emphasizing the pink flesh, the dull white of bone. But... no blood.

Anita frowned to herself and made a mental note to ask the lab tech about that. _You're going about this all backwards and inside out_ , she scolded herself. She made herself start at the beginning.

Okay.

A large clearing, covered in dead leaves. Trees ran around the edge of the clearing and up the slope to the road. No visible signs of a car or truck through the leaves. Maybe they came on foot.

Anita's gaze returned to the body. Flat on its back in the dead middle of the clearing, arms and legs spread wide. It didn't look like anything was holding the limbs in place, no ropes or nails, but Anita doubted the limbs had been moved after death.

As for the rest of the body... It looked as if the entire torso had exploded. The guts were in little pieces all over, and the front part of the ribs was missing. The edges of the remaining ribs were jagged, not cut.

 _So what, explosives?_ Anita thought. _How would they get explosives into the body? And how would they not blow up the lower part of the body?_

The head seemed to be in one piece, but Anita didn't want to approach the body just yet. There was dead magics in the air, but it didn't feel very evil. Then again, did a demon kill ever? When she viewed Betty Sherman's body in Tennessee, it didn't feel evil, just gross. At the church the previous night, it didn't feel evil to start with, only after she reached for it.

If it had been a demon kill... wait, why was everyone so convinced this was magical? "Sergeant Knight?"

"Marshal Blake?"

"Why did we get the call on this in the first place? I can't see anything preternatural about it, from this point. Why was your man so convinced it was magical in origin?"

The sound of feet crunching on leaves stalled the trooper's answer. "Seems Mendoza's grandmother was sort of a backwoods wise woman," Zerbrowski said when he got to the bottom of the hill. He took one look at the body and turned a bit green. "Mendoza said that there's something about this place, that shows the evil behind it, but only if you're looking right at it."

"Huh?" Anita started looking around, at trees and at the ground, but didn't see anything. "Did he happen to mention where we'd find the magical decoder ring for that comment?"

Zerbrowski shook his head. "He just kept saying that, over and over. He's messed up pretty bad."

"Well, if there's magic in the family, it's possible that he's sensitive or something and didn't tell anyone when he sighed up for Patrol." Anita peered around at the ground some more, then took a shallow breath and stepped closer to the body to see if there was a hint hidden in the guts.

When she was less than two feet from the corpse, a wave of nausea and bone-crunching fear rose up and almost overwhelmed her. She stumbled back and fell. There was a high-pitched keening noise, and she didn't know where it was coming from until someone shook her and it stopped. She stopped.

"Anita!" Zerbrowski was shouting. He shook her again. "Damn it, what's wrong?"

Anita took deep, deep breaths, and there was the taste of death in her mouth, but that was all right because the fear was gone. "There's a circle," she gasped. "A circle, protective or magical, around the body." She grabbed Zerbrowski's arms so she wouldn't fall over. "Someone put a protective circle around the body."

"To keep something in or out?" Zerbrowski demanded.

Anita shook her head. "Don't know. Can't know, not yet. Just don't make me walk over it again."

"Whatever you want." Zerbrowski helped Anita to stand up. "You okay?"

God, no, but there was no way she could stop now. "I'll be fine. Just give me a moment."

While Anita was concentrating on not throwing up on Zerbrowski's shoes, Zerbrowski pulled on some latex gloves. "Crime guys will be down here in ten minutes. And Perry called. The military punks landed half an hour ago and should be here any minute."

"Why do we get military on this?" Anita demanded. "I just figured it out it was magic two minutes ago."

"The FBI called them in. I think. Dolph was vague."

"Whatever. I'll deal with them when they show up." Anita took a tentative step, and didn't fall over. Progress. "So, back to Mendoza. Looking right at it." Anita looked over at Knight. "Any ideas, Sergeant?"

"None. I'll go wait for the crime scene guys, I'm no good with magic."

It was quite the honest admission from a man of Knight's position, and it lifted him a little in Anita's estimation. A lesser man would have stayed to prove how macho he was.

"So, looking right at it." Anita stepped carefully closer to the body and looked, really looked, at the face. It was peaceful, not an expression that Anita would have thought to see on an exploded body with a powerful magical circle around it.

She let out a sigh. It was Francois Duraey. The pictures she had seen of him were quite clear, down to the distinctive pockmarking on the cheeks. She looked at the ruined body and all she could think about was that John was going to be sad.

 _Would I feel sad if this was Larry, lying here staring out at the trees?_ Anita wondered. She didn't know.

The head was turned on its side and the eyes were open, staring blankly into the woods. There was bruising on the side of the...

Wait.

Staring?

Anita dropped to her hands and knees as close as she could get to the body without touching the invisible circle, and tried to follow the line of sight, the last thing the body would have seen.

She saw it.

Shaking slightly, she got to her feet and brushed leaves off her knees. Zerbrowski was still examining the body. "What's going on, Blake?" he asked, scribbling in his notebook.

"Give me your notebook."

"Why?" Zerbrowski took one look at Anita and handed the book over, no more questions.

She took the pen and carefully drew what she had seen. Zerbrowski, looking over her shoulder, asked, "What's this?"

Anita handed Zerbrowski back his pen. "The head is positioned so that it's looking directly at a certain tree, over yonder. I saw these carved into the bark."

"What are they?"

"Runes. Norse runes. I read up on them, you know, after that crucifixion in Wildwood? At the very top, we've got Ansuz. Then, below was Algiz, then Uruz." Anita bit her lip. "It's a strange order."

"So someone carved runes onto a tree, put a circle around the body and then exploded it?" Zerbrowski asked.

"A protective circle, Zerbrowski," Anita corrected absently. She was still staring at the runes on the notebook. "Probably to keep things out, otherwise I don't think I'd have had the same reaction."

"Can you backwards engineer the magic behind the circle? Tell us how it was made?"

"Probably not. Like I keep telling you guys, I'm not a witch. Tammy would be your best bet, normally, but not on this. Not now." Anita closed the book and handed it back to Zerbrowski. "You drove her to her parents' house, how's she doing after the little 'demons want to eat my husband' thing?"

Zerbrowski adjusted his glasses. "She's still shaken up. And mad."

"Yeah, I guess I'd be mad at my husband if something scary came after him and almost got us both," Anita mused, looking at the body again. It didn't look human, and that made it easier, she supposed.

Zerbrowski cleared his throat. "Actually, she's mad at you."

Anita whirled around. "Me? Why is she mad at me?"

"I think it has something to do with how you drove the evil off," Zerbrowski said carefully.

Anita stopped herself before she said anything stupid. "All I did was pray," she finally said. "That's all."

"Then why did it work for you and not Tammy? That's what was pissing her off so much." Something up the hill by the police cars caught Zerbrowski's attention, and he waved. "I think our FBI-supplied military men are here. Let's go play nice."

Anita didn't want to play nice. Anita wanted to kick something, preferably Tammy. "It's not like I walked up to the church last night knowing what I was going to do," she grumbled quietly. Zerbrowski pretended not to hear her.

Just as they got to the top of the rise, Anita caught Zerbrowski's sleeve. "Just so we're clear, who's in charge of this scene and case? RPIT or the FBI?"

Zerbrowski glanced back at her. "Under the new regs, it's a federal case. And you, my precious animator, are the ranking fed on scene. It's your case," he added when Anita just looked at him. "Unless you want to hand it over to the FBI and the military."

"God, no," Anita said before she thought about it. "Damn. Why doesn't anyone tell me these things?"

"Because you have me to make things easier," Zerbrowski replied. "I've sent the relevant troopers to headquarters to make statements, and I'll make sure the crime scene guys are on it. Since you're associated with RPIT, we can do most of the work."

"Can't I make Dolph point man and just deal with the stuff on the ground?" Anita pleaded. She did not need any more responsibility, in any way.

Zerbrowski shrugged. "Probably, if you ask him. I'm sure he'll say yes. He's convinced that you'd want to handle the whole thing yourself."

Anita bit back a scream of frustration. "Is that what you were arguing about this morning?"

"That. And other stuff." He did not elaborate.

"Fine. I'll call him after we deal with these army brats." Anita yanked off her latex gloves and pulled out her federal marshal badge from a pocket. "Think they'll take this as evidence of who's in charge, or am I going to need a billboard?"

Zerbrowski cracked a grin. "A billboard. And neon lights. Heck, you could even hire out a marching band."

"Again with the lack of confidence," Anita said as they rounded some cars and headed toward the new arrivals.

There was a man in a military-looking outfit, leaning back against a black car, looking bored. _Probably the driver_ , Anita thought, and directed her attention to the two people arguing with Sergeant Knight.

Knight turned toward her and Zerbrowski, and Anita got her first good look at the newcomers. Short, female, both with long dark hair. Anita was surprised they were both women. _Some big feminist I am._

The slightly taller one, the one who had been facing off with Knight, also turned to Anita. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she looked mightily pissed off. "You in charge?" she demanded.

Anita nodded. "Federal Marshal Anita Blake, and this is my scene. Who are you?"

The woman put her chin up in the air, just a bit. "Faith Richardson, and this is Kennedy Browne. We hear you got a demon problem?"

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

Anita raised an eyebrow. This was so not what she expected. "Ms. Richardson, and Ms. Browne," she started, "You're the military consultants."

"Yes," Kennedy said before Faith could speak.

"We're federally licensed agents, for cases like these," Faith added. She was drumming her fingers against her pant leg. Anita wondered if it was a nervous gesture or if she was just jittery around the magic in the air.

"And how..." Anita stopped herself. She smiled coldly. "This is all well and good, but I'm the ranking federal marshal on the scene, which makes this my scene and my case. I won't have it messed with by a couple of amateurs foisted onto me by the feds."

"Amateurs?" Kennedy repeated, raising her eyebrows. She seemed amused by the comment.

Faith, however, was not amused. "God. Look, marshal, we are so not amateurs," she said, visibly fighting back anger. "Call the military, call the FBI, call the goddamn president if you want. But we're all here for the same purpose. Stop the demon and find Dawn."

Anita took a deep breath. The feeling that time was running out once again welled up in her. "Two things, Ms. Richardson. One, why are you calling Ms. Summers 'Dawn'?"

"I've known Dawn for years," Faith said, frowning slightly, as if it was not the question she expected.

Anita filed that piece of information away to deal with later. "And why are you so sure that this is a demon?"

Faith put her hands on her hips. "You talked to Willow this morning?"

"Dawn's friend from New York? Briefly." Anita caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and realized that the entire contingent of troopers was watching the scene with avid interest. "Sergeant Knight?"

"Yes?" the man drawled. He was enjoying the confrontation. _Bastard._

"Do all these troopers need to be here?"

"No, marshal."

"Then clear the scene of non-essential personnel, I don't want anyone stepping on evidence," Anita snapped.

Knight actually grinned at her before he turned to his men. "Ya'll heard the marshal, back on the road!" he shouted. "Pierce, Dawson, Lee, stay here and keep the road blocked off." The troopers jumped to obey his order.

Anita turned back to Faith. "You were saying."

Faith looked uncomfortable, as if explaining things was not her strong suit. "Yeah, so Will was helping Giles researching Dawn's zombie evil, because Dawn called Giles the day after the St. Louis zombie went berserk? After she heard Dawn was AWOL, Willow called Dawn's professor in San Francisco, and turns out that Dawn talked to a grad student there who's down with the zombies, right?"

Anita sighed and wished she'd had more coffee. Listening to this woman talk was like walking into a badly-subtitled foreign film halfway through. "Stop. Just... stop. Who's Giles? And what qualifications does this Willow have?"

"Rupert Giles," Kennedy said, all business. "He's a professor at the New York university, on mythology and preternatural history. And Willow Rosenberg, she's his colleague."

"Assistant," Faith interjected.

"You make her sound like a secretary," Kennedy said, turning to Faith. It sounded like an old argument. "Junior partner."

"Assistant, junior partner, Girl Friday, I don't care." Anita concentrated on keeping her voice normal, but her anger was rising. "Ms. Rosenberg called San Francisco. Then what?"

Faith took the story back up. "So apparently Ferdi, that's the grad student, emailed Dawn this morning. After he talked to her on Wednesday, he talked to an animator in Santa Monica. They'd been looking into the zombie thing, and found some references in obscure and no doubt boring as rocks books that pointed to demon activity that might have been able to interrupt animators across the country."

Kennedy coughed. Faith turned to look at her, and Kennedy mouthed something.

"Oh, right. Did your town's vamps go wonky on the twenty-second?" Faith asked.

Anita shivered, only just beginning to notice the cold. "No."

"Oh. Well, good for you. In Cleveland, they went crazy. So whatever it was, probably was able to influence the undead as well as the truly dead."

Zerbrowski pulled his notepad out of his pocket. "That didn't make the news," he said, flipping pages.

Faith snorted. "Cleveland's media continually drifts downstream on Denial River. They wouldn't notice anything if a vampire went Mike Tyson on a room full of news anchors. You a cop?"

"Sergeant Zerbrowski, RPIT." Zerbrowski had his professional face on, the one Anita had only seen since he made sergeant. Anita realized that maybe, one day, he'd take over RPIT. _He could do it_ , she thought.

"Cool. Look, call Cleveland's police chief, he'll give you the low-down," Faith said. She flicked her big brown eyes back to Anita. "Can we get on with it?"

Anita smiled again, and this time it was down-right frosty. "I haven't agreed to let you on my scene yet. This demon you think it is, do you have any more proof? Information?"

"Willow has it," Kennedy said. She didn't seem to mind standing in the cold. "She's going to meet us at the police station. We've worked with her for years. Trust me, if it's to be known, Willow will know it."

"We haven't got time for this," Faith interrupted, anger heating her voice again. "Dawn's missing, probably related to this death you got in the woods. If there's a demon on the loose, we can't be wasting time jumping through your hoops!"

Anita took a step forward until she was a bit too close to Faith. Something about this woman just pushed all of her buttons the wrong way. "I am perfectly aware of how little time we have! We need all the help we can get, but I will not have our only piece of evidence compromised or downright wrecked by two people who I don't even know! That man lying down there, he was one of ours, an animator. I need to find what ripped him up before it happens to anyone else." Anita realized that her hands were clenched in fists at her sides, and made herself relax her body. "I'm going to make a phone call, after which I will decide if, and I stress the 'if', you will be joining us, or you will be going back to the airport."

Faith opened her mouth, but Anita held up her hand, palm open. "I just told you how it's going to be. Or else I don't make the phone call and you get back in your car now."

Faith breathed in slowly through her nose, then took a deliberate step back. "Make your call," she said. Her voice may have been soft, but there was a threat there.

Anita could feel the emotion radiating off the other woman. When she looked into Faith's eyes, she saw a hint of predator there, something she had only seen in lycanthropes.

Anita moved away, careful not to turn her back on Faith or Kennedy. She pulled out her cell phone and dialled.

The phone rang only a few times before someone picked up. "Bradford."

Special Agent Bradley Bradford was Anita's main contact at the FBI's preternatural crimes department. "It's Anita Blake."

Bradford let out a whistle. "I was wondering how long before I heard from you."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"I assume you're on that scene at the campsite?"

"Yes."

"And the two consultants are there?"

Anita ground her teeth. "Yes."

"And you're not sure what to do with them?"

"Oh, I know exactly what they can do," Anita replied. "What I'm not sure of is what they can help me with, or even why they're here? Why did the FBI call in people on my case?"

"We didn't call them, Anita, they called us."

Anita started pacing. "Explain. Now."

Bradford sighed. "Before I say any more, you have to know that what I'm about to tell you can't go any further. They work behind the scenes. They don't like the press, or the spotlight. But I can tell you this, they are good. Really good."

"They?"

"Yes, they. There's a bunch of them, they work as consultants on the really tough shit, cases where the local police are not equipped to deal with the things that go bump in the night."

"Isn't that why we have you guys?"

"No. Their department was officially created at around the same time as ours, but they're attached to the military because they work worldwide. You got a big bad monster killing all over, they stop it."

"So these two..."

"Richardson and Browne? Two of the best. They called us when they found out that the sister of their top dog, Dawn Summers, was missing. Seems this sort of stuff happens to her all the time."

"Back it up. Explain more about the sister bit."

Anita could hear papers being shuffled on the other end of the line. "The leader of this little group is Buffy Summers. She's currently in West Virginia."

"Is that where she's based?"

"No, that's where the kids started disappearing, then reappearing with their livers eaten. Whatever is doing this, has gotten ten kids so far. Ms. Summers got in late last night and we haven't heard anything since then."

Anita pushed a strand of hair, escaped from her ponytail, out of her eye. "So I have to take on these two?"

Bradford was suddenly serious. "Listen to me. These two are the best. They've been doing this for more than five years. Their success rate is high, insanely high. If it were me, I'd take any help they are willing to give."

"Shit."

"Yeah. You can thank me later. Oh, and Blake?"

"What?"

"The one in charge, Faith? She's got a problem with authority."

"Really? I hadn't noticed." Anita shook her head. "I'll let you know how it goes."

"Take care of yourself, Blake. Although if last night is any indication, you're on the side of angels with this one." Bradford hung up.

Anita stared at her phone. "Has everyone heard about that?" she asked no one in particular.

Sliding her phone back into her pocket, she rejoined the huddle. Zerbrowski was looking at her with only the slightest trace of amusement.

"Here's the deal. You're in, but I am in charge." Anita pinned Faith with a glare. "You have access to the scene, but everything, and I mean everything, comes to me. Clues, evidence, information, ideas, random thoughts. I get it all. Otherwise, I'll put you both in a box and label it return to sender. Am I clear?"

Kennedy nodded, and nudged Faith, who was glaring back at Anita. "Clear as glass," Faith said.

Anita was about to lead them down to the body, but after the way Faith responded, she changed her mind. "I need to talk to you," she said to Faith. "Alone."

Faith uncrossed her arms and stalked off to the side of the police cars. Anita followed.

"What?" the other woman said irritably.

Anita took a deep breath. "If you can't tone down the chip on your shoulder attitude, that's it. You're going home."

"You can't be serious," Faith said incredulously.

"I have never been more serious," Anita said in a low, dangerous voice. She could sense the predator in Faith again, and she let the cold part of her come back to the fore, the place she went when she killed, the cold part where life and death were the same. "Last night, some big evil attacked me in the graveyard. It attacked my apprentice and his pregnant wife. It nearly succeeded in barring me from a church. Now we have another dead animator, and a missing person who was working at our office. My life, and the lives of people who I care about, are on the line. I will not risk them over you going into this half-cocked."

Faith turned and took a few steps before kicking a tree stump. Her shoulders were hunched forward, like she was in a fight, but Anita suspected that the fight was internal.

"I talked to Buffy," Faith said, her back still to Anita. "Dawn's sister. She told me that she needed me here, for Dawn. For her to say that--" Faith stopped herself. "We have a history, Buffy and I. Me and Dawn, too. I can't let anything happen to her."

"Is that going to get in your way?" Anita asked. "Are you too close to this to work objectively?"

Faith turned around and shook her head. "If you're half as good as they say you are, I'm with you."

Anita wondered who 'they' were. "So. Can you work with me? With us?"

"Yes." The indecision in Faith was gone. In its place was stone-cold determination.

"Come on, then. Let's rescue your colleague from Zerbrowski."

Faith snorted and smiled slightly. "Other way around."

When they made it back to the cars, Zerbrowski was standing off to the side, watching Kennedy and Knight swapping war stories. Kennedy raised an eyebrow on their approach. "You set?" she asked Faith.

"Flying. You got the thing?"

Kennedy patted a long black case at her side. "As always."

"We're all yours," Faith told Anita.

Great. Just great. "Zerbrowski, you're with us. Knight?"

"I've got to call in, see who's going to cover all these shifts," the trooper said, tipping his hat at Anita. "Marshal."

"I think you've impressed someone," Zerbrowski muttered under his breath as he caught up to Anita.

"Shut up."

"No, I'm serious." Zerbrowski chuckled, then slipped on some leaves. Anita carried on, letting him pick himself up. Faith and Kennedy walked around him like he was a rock in a stream. "Hey!"

"So what makes you two such specialists?" Anita asked as they made their way down to the yellow tape.

"Years of experience," Kennedy said. "I've got a degree in preternatural biology and have taken several training sessions with the FBI, and Faith has--"

"Experience in the field," Faith interrupted. She held up a hand. "Hold on."

Anita watched, curious, as Faith opened her eyes a little bit wider and looked around the trees.

"How did they approach?" Faith asked.

"Don't know. No evidence of a car." Anita pulled her unused pair of latex gloves out of her pocket and put them on. "So how do you two go about looking at things?"

"Do a perimeter circle, then get to the body, otherwise you miss stuff," Faith said absently. "Kenn, you go left, I'll go right. If that's all right with you, Marshal."

Anita tapped her tongue against the roof of her mouth. If she was going to let these two on her scene, she actually had to let these two onto the scene. Damn. "Go ahead."

Faith nodded, then took off, almost running off into the woods, head down. Kennedy tossed the strap of the carrying case over her shoulder and mimicked the other woman's speed on the other direction.

Anita watched them through the skeletal trees. Zerbrowski joined her, brushing dead leaves off his jacket. "If I ask a question, as you going to shoot me?"

"Probably not." Anita watched as Faith doubled back on herself and hopped up on a rock, bending down to look at something.

"What made you let them on the scene? Who'd you call?"

"Special Agent Bradford, remember him from the Van Anders case?"

"Yes."

"He said they were the best. We need help, Zerbrowski. We haven't got time to be shooting blanks into the dark and hope we get this thing." Anita shook her head and started picking her way down the slope for the body. "I don't know how to fight what was at the church last night. I don't know if it somehow grabbed Dawn, or if someone did it, connected or not."

"How did the talking to the people at the club thing go?"

"Buzz, the head of security, he's not that old. He'll still be dead. I've got Graham, one of the other guys there, he told me he'd get Buzz to call as soon as he got up."

"A vampire named Buzz?"

Anita stopped long enough to give Zerbrowski a look. "Stop sidetracking. None of the non-vamp security guys saw anything out of the ordinary. And I already told you that Nathaniel and Gregory said that Dawn hadn't been drinking nearly enough to intoxicate her."

"Anyone ever tell you that you know too many people in the male stripping industry?" Zerbrowski joked.

Anita didn't find it very funny. "Actually, yes, My father, when he told me not to bother coming home for Christmas this year."

"Shit, Blake, I'm sorry."

Anita shrugged and tried to pretend that it didn't matter. "Forget about it. We've got bigger things to deal with."

Faith and Kennedy ran up, having completed their circuit. "I didn't see anything except where someone tossed their cookies," Kennedy said, not even breathing hard.

Faith tossed her head back to get her hair out of her face. "I think I did. There's an old stream, now just a rocky bed covered with leaves, over there." She pointed. "There's a couple of scuff marks against the rocks. You should have your CSI types check it, but that may lead to where they came from." She met Anita's eyes. "Can we have at the body now?"

"Don't touch anything," Anita warned.

Kennedy nodded, all business again. "Don't worry, we've done this before." She placed her carrying case against a nearby tree and tossed a pair of latex gloves at Faith.

Faith smirked as she slid the gloves on with practiced ease. "Hey, did I ever tell you--"

"Yeah, you did. I don't want to hear it again."

"Whatever you say, ma'am." Faith gave Kennedy a mock salute before turning to the body.

Both women circled the body with the same practiced ease as they had the site. It was oddly hypnotic, like watching a ballet. They were careful where they placed their feet. At one point, Faith paused in an awkward position and moved her foot before setting it down to avoid touching a bit of body.

"Before today, I wouldn't have said that having two extra of you around could be an asset at a scene," Zerbrowski murmured into Anita's ear.

"What do you mean, two extra of me?" Anita said, confused.

"Look at them. They move like you, they even look a bit like you. Plus Richardson's got enough attitude in spades."

"Okay, first off, I look nothing like her," Anita hissed. "Second... I'm much more personable than she is."

Zerbrowski made a noise in his throat. "Whatever you say."

Kennedy dropped to the ground, holding herself up in a finger-tip push up, to look at the side of the body.

Anita reconsidered both women. Yes, they were short and had dark hair, but what else? Faith was bitchy and grumpy, but was Anita as bad? And Kennedy, too cold, all business. Anita swallowed hard. She wasn't like that, was she?

Would it matter? As long as she did her job, did it matter how she did it? Half the police in town thought she was nothing more than a vampire's whore, or if they listened to what Arnet was saying, some kind of cougar scooping up heroin-addicted adolescents off the street for boy-toys.

But it mattered what Zerbrowski thought. It mattered what the others thought. And now Tammy was mad at her for making the crosses glow, and Arnet was still mad at her about Nathaniel. Dolph... God only knew what Dolph thought.

"What about Count Dracula?" Zerbrowski asked, bringing her back to the woods.

"What about Jean-Claude?" Anita asked. Another wave of exhaustion crashed over her, and she had to fight off the urge to close her eyes.

"Have you talked to him yet? It was his club."

"I know." Anita watched as Faith crouched near the body to peer into the torso cavity. "I want to talk to Buzz first. Then Jean-Claude."

"Um..."

"What?" Her voice came out more hostile than she meant it.

"In the interests of the case, maybe someone else should talk to Jean-Claude about this." Zerbrowski was cautious but firm.

Anita started to protest reflexively, but managed to hold her tongue. "You're right," she said, looking up at Zerbrowski.

His serious face split into a grin. "Can you say that again? Maybe I can get it on tape?"

"Stop it," Anita said, fighting a smile. "I'll call Jean-Claude in a minute to figure out where he'll be, so you can get someone to talk to him tonight."

"Okay." Zerbrowski pulled his notebook out of his pocket, and his cell phone.

"You're not... you're not going to make Arnet do it, are you?" Anita asked, suddenly wary.

"Why not?"

Anita couldn't tell if he was joking with her or not. "Damn it. Remember a while ago, when I told you that if Arnet wanted to tell you about our fight, she'd tell you?"

"Yes."

"Did she?"

Zerbrowski shook his head.

"Part of it was over something that she saw Jean-Claude and myself doing at Guilty Pleasures."

Zerbrowski's eyes got big.

"No, not that! Nathaniel was there."

The eyebrows started to go up as well.

Oh, she was saying this all wrong. "That's not what I mean! It was on stage."

Zerbrowski started to laugh. "You were on stage with Count Dracula and your male stripper boyfriend at Guilty Pleasures, and it's not what I think it is?"

"No! It was just part of the act." Anita was uncharacteristically flustered. She hadn't been this confused when she was talking to Arnet about it. Of course, she had been angry at the time. "Arnet saw what I did to Nathaniel and got all pissy about it. And I think she'd think the same thing of Jean-Claude."

The smirk was wiped of Zerbrowski's face. "Wait, she's mad at you over something that you did to your boyfriend in front of a crowd of other women?" He looked down at his cell phone and ran his thumb over the keys. "Damn it."

Anita went back to watching Faith and Kennedy, both still looking at the body.

"We haven't really spoken since then," Anita continued. "Maybe she's over it."

"No, she isn't."

There was something in Zerbrowski's voice. "Was that part of the thing you were talking to her about this morning?" Anita asked.

"Yes."

Faith stood up and picked her way back around the body to where Zerbrowski and Anita stood. "Your CSI's coming," she said, gesturing with her head up the hill.

"CSU. In St. Louis, they're CSU." Anita waved at one of the techs she knew. He waved back. "Ms. Browne?"

Kennedy stood up and joined them. "Who's first?"

"Go," Faith said, rotating her neck and stretching her arms above her head.

"First off, no blood," Kennedy began.

"Ditto. Wicked strange," Faith said.

"Then, way the ribs are broke, looks like the point of explosion was just under the breastbone. And the guts all around, probably whatever it was, was under the guts, above the spine." Kennedy demonstrated with graphic hand gestures while she talked.

Faith made a face. "There aren't any tracks near the body, except the really recent ones," she said. "Unless whatever did this can fly, it covered its tracks but good. Not even tracks for the dead man to walk in."

"There are spells that would cover tracks," Kennedy said, tapping her hands together. "Willow'd know."

"She'd be in yet?" Faith made it a question.

Kennedy shrugged.

"Right." Faith took one last look at the body. "Unless there's anything else, can we go? I'd like to hear what Will has to say on the demon side of things."

Anita frowned. "No, we can't."

"Why not?" Faith asked, a hint of belligerence back in her tone.

The attitude was the only reason Anita said what she did. "Because you missed something. Two somethings."

"Didn't," Faith shot back before thinking about it.

Anita smiled, and she knew it was a bitchy smile, and she couldn't help it. "Yes. The body's looking at a tree, a tree with runes. You passed right by it, but I think that's because you can't see them unless you're looking at them the right way. Second, there's a magical circle around the body, but I guess since you're not magical, you'd have missed that, too."

Faith frowned, a line appearing between her eyebrows, and she shook her head. "Kennedy," she said, suddenly serious. They headed back for the body.

Anita felt horrible. They had flown from... wherever, to help stop whatever bad thing was out there, and to find Dawn, whom Faith had known for years, and here she was, belittling them. She was supposed to be in charge, be the adult about it, and she went and did something like that.

"Mind if I say something?" Zerbrowski asked quietly.

"What, you going to tell me that I was out of line and I acted like a child, not someone in charge of a crime scene, when all they're trying to do is help, cold, on a body?"

"Now I don't have to. Jesus, Anita, what's wrong with you? You've never acted like this before."

"I know." She wished she knew why she was behaving like a bitch. Stress? Exhaustion? Whatever it was, they couldn't afford it. "Zerbrowski..."

"You're doing fine, Anita. We work together, we'll get this done." Zerbrowski started pushing buttons on his cell phone. "And I'll tell you if you're out of line," he said as he lifted the phone to his ear.

"Thanks."

Faith came back over, shaking her head. "Damn, but that's some good camouflage," she said. "You can't even see it unless you're right on top of it. You sure about that circle, though?"

"It was there," Anita said.

"Neither Kenn or me can sense it, and we can usually get a hint of the magic in the air." Faith stared at Anita for a long moment. There was an intelligence in her eyes Anita hadn't seen before. Maybe she hadn't been looking. "Maybe it's gone?"

"One way to find out," Kennedy shouted from the body. "Have her try again."

Anita's gut clenched, a visceral reaction to not wanting to step back in that circle. But they needed to know if the circle was broken.

Zerbrowski hung up the phone and put it back in his pocket. "You can't be serious," he said as Anita made herself take a step forward.

"I have to do this," Anita said.

"The fuck you do. Remember what you said to me not half an hour ago? Do the words 'don't make me walk over it again' sound familiar?"

"So I won't walk over it, I'll just touch it," Anita said. She peeled one glove off and shoved it in her pocket. "Oh, come on, Zerbrowski, you know we need this."

Zerbrowski didn't look happy.

Anita made her way to the body, and stopped just this side of the circle. She couldn't see anything, but she knew where it was, as clear as if it was painted in big red stripes. _Just stay calm_ , she told herself, as she reached her fingers toward the circle.

It was worse this time. Terror and shame and panic screamed through her head, until it was her screaming, screaming so loudly that her throat hurt.

There were hands on her body, carrying her, and she fought, kicked. Her foot connected with something soft, and she was almost free, but then something strong, stronger than she was, held her down. She kicked and screamed, tried to get free, but it was no use. All she was, was afraid.

 _Ma petite, ma petite!_ a voice screamed in her head, almost louder than her screams. _Anita!_

The scream had two parts, two voices, and together they were louder than she was. Her terror began to slide away, down that path where the voices were, and vanished into the darkness.

Slowly, with laboured gasps, she came back to herself. She was lying on the forest floor, hands holding down her legs and arms. She pressed against the hands one more time, then slumped back onto the ground. It took her a few tries, but she finally managed to say, "Let go."

She blinked, and realized that Kennedy was kneeling on her legs, while Faith had her wrists down over her head. It was far too much like an ardeur feeding she'd once done with Byron and Requiem, except everyone was clothed and girls, that Anita giggled. The giggle turned into a coughing fit.

They let go of her, and she curled into a ball on her side, still coughing.

"I've had enough!" It was Zerbrowski shouting, somewhere above her. "No more fucking experiments! You two, get in that car of yours and follow us to the damn station, where we will discuss this. Got it?"

 _Why's he so angry?_ Anita thought hazily. Her coughing fit slowed, then stopped.

Someone was helping her sit up. It was Zerbrowski. There was a trickle of blood running down the side of his mouth.

"What happened to you?" Anita asked, still bewildered.

"You kicked me," Zerbrowski said mildly, his voice a total change from a few seconds before. "Come on, time to leave. Up you get."

Anita let him pull her to her feet. "Why'd I do that?"

"Come on, let's go back to the car, we'll talk about it there." He put his arm around her waist, helped guide her away up the hill.

There was something wrong with the situation, but for the life of her, Anita couldn't figure out what. She stumbled a few times, but Zerbrowski kept helping her back up.

He didn't even make a joke. Weird.

Anita didn't protest when he put her in the passenger seat of his car. She put her seatbelt on, like she always did, but closed her eyes before Zerbrowski even got in the driver's seat. So tired.

She fell asleep before they made it out to the highway.

* * *


	11. Chapter 11

* * *

The hum of a moving car was all around her. Anita blinked slowly, wincing as the afternoon light hit her eyes.

"You awake?"

Anita turned her head on the headrest. "Hey, Zerbrowski," she said weakly.

"Hey yourself. How are you feeling?"

Anita thought about it. A bit too long.

"Blake?"

"I'm here." Anita watched the car in front of them. "What happened?"

"You touched that damn circle around the body again, and freaked out. I tried to pull you away, but it was like your hand was being pulled inside that circle. Richardson and Browne carried you away and held you down until you stopped screaming."

Anita remembered part of that. "Is your mouth still bleeding?"

Zerbrowski shrugged. "Only a little."

"I'm sorry I kicked you," Anita said, her voice so soft that she barely heard it.

"Actually, I'm looking forward to it," Zerbrowski said lightly. "Considering how badly a lot of people and monsters turn out after you're through with them, I figure that I'll have a great war story."

"That's all I do, isn't it?"

"What are you talking about?"

Anita pulled her legs up onto the seat. The heater was blowing warm air into the car, but she was cold. "I destroy things. Or else I come in after the destruction is over, and all I can do is mop up the mess. I deal in death, Zerbrowski, there's nothing to be proud of in that."

Anita was getting ready for a nice long melancholy pout, not that she would ever admit that she pouted, when Zerbrowski snorted. "Oh, drop the melodrama, Anita."

Anita's head snapped up. "What--"

"Here you are, looking all fragile and delicate, woe is you and all that crap. Yes, you kill the bad things, Anita, because there's no one else to do it. I'm not going to pretend to understand why you started this job, but you're here now. You stop things before they can create more chaos, more destruction. You destroy a single life, a single creature, to save countless others. So save the angst for someone whose life hasn't been saved by you, okay? My kids have a father and Katie isn't a widow because you killed something, Anita, before it finished killing me."

Zerbrowski turned off the freeway and headed for the police station. The traffic was heavy, as always on a Friday afternoon downtown. As they waited for a flock of teenagers to cross the street, Anita said, "I hadn't thought of it that way."

"I noticed. Jesus, Blake, what's your problem today? You're second-guessing yourself, you're making decisions that aren't the best."

"I don't know!" Anita exclaimed, and to her horror her voice cracked. "I just... I don't know if what I'm doing is right anymore."

"From what I've seen, you've been doing the right things," Zerbrowski said cautiously.

"Yeah, because touching that circle was a brilliant plan." Anita wrapped her arms around her knees. It was difficult, on a car seat with the seatbelt, but she did it. She felt empty inside, and she wondered if it was a reaction to the circle.

"Granted, that was a pretty dumb idea, but you were right, we needed to make sure the circle wasn't broken. But now we know that it reacted to you. Remember the last time that happened? It was a necromancer then, right?"

"Yeah," Anita admitted grudgingly.

The car ahead of them cut them off, and Zerbrowski honked his horn. "Dickhead. Like I was saying, you're doing things right."

"Then why does it feel like I'm fucking up?" Anita asked, using the sun visor mirror to make sure her hair wasn't too messed up.

"I'm going to change topic slightly here, but we're on point, so bear with me, okay?" Zerbrowski waited for Anita to nod. "St. Louis has the largest per capita vampire population in the country. We have the most vampire businesses, the most tourists coming to see the vamps."

"Since Jean-Claude owns a lot of the vamps, this isn't news to me."

"Do you realize that we have the lowest vampire murder rate in the country? Not per capita, but real. In this county, hell, this state, fewer vampires commit crimes of any kind. And do you know why that is?"

"Because Jean-Claude won't tolerate it?" Anita did not see where this was headed.

"Jean-Claude's not the master of the whole state, no matter how powerful he is." Zerbrowski slowed, and turned the car into the police station parking lot. "It's because of you and the threat you represent."

"Just great."

"No, it is great," Zerbrowski insisted. He killed the ignition. "Think of all those people who haven't been killed by vampires, recklessly or deliberately. Lives that haven't been ended, families that haven't been destroyed."

Anita took a deep breath. Was he right? Or, really, did it matter if he was wrong?

"Zerbrowski..."

There was a tap on the window, and Anita almost jumped out of her skin. She opened the door to find Micah standing in the cold.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. He was usually at work at this time of day.

Micah stared down at her, his kitty-cat eyes yellow with worry. "Are you all right?"

"Yes. No. Why?"

Micah knelt on the edge of the seat, so close she could smell his aftershave and that subtle but unmistakeable Micah smell.

"Jean-Claude called me forty-five minutes ago, in a panic. He couldn't come find you himself, but he thought this is where you'd come."

How did Jean-Claude know she'd been in trouble? Anita suddenly remembered the screams she had heard in her head, back in the forest. "He was worried?"

Zerbrowski undid his seatbelt and opened his own car door. "Come on, Blake, into the station. This weather's cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey."

"A brass monkey used to hold cannon balls, did you know that?" Anita said as she stood up and promptly stumbled.

She would have hit the ground, but Micah caught her and gently helped her regain her feet. "Let's get you inside," is all he said.

Anita let Micah help her walk across the icy parking lot. Zerbrowski trailed along after them.

Once through the main doors to the police station, Micah placed Anita on a bench, just off to the side of the metal detectors. He knelt in front of her. "What's wrong?"

Anita looked for something bad in his eyes, condemnation or blame, but saw only worry. Tears rose up in her eyes and she tried desperately to blink them away. She could not afford to appear weak, not now. "I just-- I'm all tired inside and I don't know why," she said softly.

Micah brushed the hair back from her face with both hands, and the touch made Anita close her eyes. "Did you get any sleep at all last night?" Micah asked.

"She got three hours passed out on my desk," Zerbrowski said. He leaned against the wall, watching Anita. "And another half hour in the car. No more."

Micah sighed. "Here, I've got something for you." He slid his bag, an old messenger bag Anita had always teased him about, to the ground and pulled a bottle out. "Drink this."

"What's in it?" Anita asked, even though she wondered if it would make her stop feeling so empty inside.

"I made you a protein drink, come on." Micah unscrewed the lid and put the bottle into Anita's hands. "Your energy level's probably low already, this will help you out."

Anita usually hated protein drinks, but this tasted like bananas and blueberries and cinnamon. While she drank it, Micah rummaged around in his bag, pulling out a sandwich wrapped in a little plastic bag, and an apple.

"When you're done that, you can eat these. It'll help get your energy level up until you can sleep."

Anita grabbed Micah's hand as he placed the sandwich on the bench next to her. "Thank you," she whispered.

He smiled up at her, but the worry was still there. "You're welcome."

The main doors to the station opened, and Anita looked up to see Faith and Kennedy walk in.

"I'll take care of them," Zerbrowski said, pushing himself off the wall. "Get up to the squad room in a few minutes, okay?" He walked over to the two women.

Anita made herself look back at Micah. "Now, why are you really here?"

"Can't a guy just want to bring his girl a sandwich?"

"A normal guy can, to a normal girl, but we're not normal," Anita said softly. "Come on, tell me."

Micah moved up to the bench beside her and placed an arm over her shoulders, drawing her into the curve of his body. Anita snuggled up to him, marveling once again at how well they fit together.

"Jean-Claude called me, in a panic, less than an hour ago. He said he felt you, panicking, terrified."

"I was."

Micah kissed the top of her head. "He also felt how empty you are."

Anita pulled away. It was one thing for her to think it, but when Jean-Claude talked to Micah about it, was a whole different matter.

"Anita, I need to ask you, when was the last time you fed the ardeur?"

Anita jerked back, almost falling off the bench. That was it, why she felt so empty. "Oh my God, Damien, Nathaniel!"

"Shh, Anita, it's okay, they're fine," Micah said, trying to soothe her. "Jean-Claude's making sure they're fine. I assume this means you fed last with Nathaniel, last night?"

Anita nodded, still horrified at how easily she had misread her own signals. If her energy level went down now, the ardeur wouldn't rise, but it still needed to be fed. If she failed to feed it, the master/servant system would kick in, and she could start to drain Damien, her Master Necromancer to his vampire. She'd almost killed him twice at the beginning of November, before she realized what she needed to do.

"And you've been going a whole day for a while now," Micah continued. "Jean-Claude thought that maybe it was because whatever you were dealing with last night and today, drained your energy."

Anita buried her face in her hands. She didn't have time to go home, feed the ardeur, and come back to the station.

"He thinks he can feed you energy until you get a chance to feed the ardeur, Anita," Micah continued.

"Really?" she asked in a little girl voice.

"Really. With some food, you'll probably be able to hold out for a few more hours, do whatever cop business you came back here for." Micah laid his hand on her knee. "I got dropped off by Gregory. I've got the extra keys, and I'll go get the Jeep."

"I don't know how long I'll be," Anita said, voice still soft. How stupid could she be? The ardeur accepted no excuses, no reasoning.

"I've got my cell phone, call me. I'll come get you, take you home--"

"The Circus," Anita interrupted.

"Pardon?"

"The Circus is closer, in case anything happens."

"Okay, the Circus is it," Micah said reasonably. He was always like that. "We'll go to the Circus, feed the ardeur and then you can get some sleep."

"That sounds nice," Anita said, and wrapped her hand around his to give it a squeeze. "Thank you."

Micah pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it. "There's no need to thank me. I'm just trying to help."

"Why?" Anita asked before she could think better of it.

Micah frowned and lowered their joined hands to his lap. "Because I love you, and that's what I want to do."

"Oh." Anita slid her hand out of his, and stood up. "I have to go. The briefing and all."

"I understand. Remember to eat your sandwich, okay?"

Anita tried to dig up some irritation at being told to eat, like a child, but she failed. Micah's concern made her feel warm inside. Maybe this was what love was. "Okay. See you later."

She turned, skirted the metal detector, and climbed the stairs to RPIT headquarters.

 

* * *

  
No one noticed at first as she slipped into the squad room, headed for Dolph's office. But then, gradually, people started to stop talking, until it was quiet and everyone was staring at her.

It felt like someone was going to jump out of a closet and scream boo. "What?" Anita asked, and the word was loud in the silent room.

Merlioni stood up and leaned on the edge of his desk. "They're saying you made every holy object in a mile of that church last night glow, to save Tammy's and Larry's lives."

Not this again. Anita closed her eyes in weariness. "I don't know if it was a mile, all I could see was the stuff near the church."

Merlioni just looked at her.

"What?"

Merlioni shrugged and stood up. "I'm just saying."

Anita shook her head and continued to Dolph's office, head down. It was too much to deal with.

The door to Dolph's office was open, the man himself sitting behind his desk. Anita knocked on the doorframe. "Can I talk to you?"

Dolph closed the folder on his desk and motioned Anita into the office's other chair. "What?"

Anita took a deep breath. "It's about this case."

"What about it?"

"I was thinking, that it's highly likely that the thing that attacked Larry and Tammy, and the body in the woods, they're probably connected."

"That tallies with what Zerbrowski said," Dolph said, straightening his tie. He looked fresh out of the box, as always. Anita wondered how long he'd been at work.

"This sounded a lot better in my head," Anita muttered. "I know that the woods scene is my scene, but it doesn't make any sense to handle these separately."

"There is also the case of the rampaging zombie," Dolph added. "I have been reading those notes of your Ms. Summers, and I have to say she has some very interesting ideas. How plausible do you think her ideas are?"

"It's a plausible option," Anita said cautiously. "Of course, I'm not sure that it's the only option. I'd like to hear what Ms. Rosenberg, Dawn's friend from New York, has to say."

Zerbrowski came into the office. "I see you started without me," he said as he sat on the edge of Dolph's desk. "So, can we have the case?"

"It's up to Dolph," Anita said. She unwrapped her sandwich and took a bite. Turkey. Anita wondered if there was a reason Micah was trying to get her to eat so much protein.

Dolph leaned back in his chair. "It would save on manpower if we linked these cases together. Fitzgerald and Wahid from downstairs, they're working on the kidnapping, but I've heard neither of them would be adverse to working with us."

"So is the answer yes?" Zerbrowski asked.

Dolph looked at Anita for a long minute. "Yes. But I want Anita to co-ordinate with you, Zerbrowski, to keep the FBI off our backs on the kidnapping."

"Is that the only reason?" Anita asked, trying to keep her voice light, but inside, Dolph's comment had scored a direct hit. _I know I always feel like crap when I'm low on energy, but this is getting ridiculous,_ Anita thought.

Dolph gathered his papers together and stood up. "Of course not." There was a look in his eyes, not exactly softness, but it was more than Anita had seen directed at her in many months. "Come on, to the briefing room."

"I sat Richardson and Browne down, and that friend of theirs should be here any minute," Zerbrowski said, following Dolph.

"Good. Get everyone up here, including Fitzgerald and Wahid. We're going to start as soon as we can."

Anita followed more sedately. Now that she had some more food in her, and she didn't have to shoot anything or look at dead things, she felt better. She popped the last bit of sandwich into her mouth and headed for the coffee pot.

The room buzzed with its normal level of activity. No one bothered Anita as she leaned against the wall, sipping on a coffee with a bit too much sugar. Normally, when she added sugar to coffee, she put in cream, but the only thing available was that powdered creamer stuff. She hated that.

There was a slight hiccup in the noise in the office. Anita looked toward the main doors, and saw Detective Clive Perry leading a young redhead through the desks.

 _Is this Willow?_ Anita wondered. She wasn't very tall, and physically she looked fragile, bordering on frail, but Anita could feel the brush of her power from halfway across the room. It didn't feel like a lycanthrope's power, nor a necromancer.

Suddenly, Anita wondered if this woman may actually have saved the word, as Dawn had written in her journal.

The woman stopped as she and Perry reached her. "Are... are you Anita Blake?" she asked. Her voice was softer than it had been on the phone, more exhausted.

"I am," Anita replied. Normally, when a person with a lot of metaphysical power got closer to her, the feeling of that power got more intense. But with this woman, it was a steady hum in the background.

"I'm Willow Rosenberg, we spoke on the phone this morning? About Dawn?" Willow held out her hand.

Anita looked at that pale hand. "We did."

Willow flushed and put her hand back down. Now Anita felt bad, and she wasn't sure if it was her emotion or Willow's.

"No, look, I'd shake your hand, I would," Anita said, putting her coffee down. "But I've had enough metaphysical shenanigans for one day, and you've got enough power rolling off you that I don't need to shake your hand."

Now Willow looked mortified. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she stammered. All of a sudden, the power was gone, as if someone had slammed a door. Anita couldn't sense anything. "I've just been so worried and busy that I'm not thinking."

Her control, when she was thinking of it, was excellent. Anita couldn't feel a thing from her. That was more disturbing than her power itself. "Hey, it's okay. It's been a fucked up day for everyone."

"Is there any news on Dawn?" Willow asked.

Anita shook her head. "We've got a meeting in a bit, to go over what we know. Ms. Browne said that you have some information on what Dawn was researching?"

Willow nodded, her hazel eyes never leaving Anita's face. "Lots of stuff. And all of it too late, as usual."

Anita knew how that went. "Why don't I take you into the briefing room? I think that's where Ms. Richardson and Mr. Browne are."

Willow nodded again. Anita wondered if this odd urge to want to protect Willow was her own thought, or if it was something else. She normally didn't get protective of anyone her own age.

Whatever it was, Anita hoped that some sleep would get rid of it.

Picking up her coffee cup again, Anita pointed the way. Willow pulled along a suitcase on wheels that Anita hadn't notice before, and walked slowly in that direction.

The RPIT briefing room was a large room that no one had bothered to paint in a few decades, so the place was now fashionably retro. A few cops, including Zerbrowski and Dolph, milled about at one end of the room, while Kennedy and Faith sat at the other end. The two women looked up when the door opened.

Willow abandoned her suitcase by the door and walked quickly to the women. Anita was surprised when Kennedy stood and hugged Willow. The red head briefly rested her forehead on Kenney's shoulder, before pulling back. Then she turned to Faith. There was no hug here, but there was a glance shared that carried as much weight.

"No word on Dawn, yet," Faith said softly.

Willow shook her head. "None. And I couldn't find her."

Anita frowned. What did that mean, Willow couldn't find Dawn? That much was self-evident.

Dolph was also frowning, which meant he heard Willow's comment.

Faith seemed oblivious to the cops in the room. "Not even... I mean, if she was..."

"There's no trace of her, alive or dead," Willow said quietly.

Anita was already moving toward the other women. "What do you mean, no trace?" she demanded.

Willow looked at her, startled. "I mean, um, no trace. Not alive, not dead."

"No, I mean trace of what? How? What are you talking about?"

Willow took a deep breath. Kennedy and Faith moved to stand on either side of her, like bodyguards. The look on Faith's face was almost frightening in its intensity.

"Before I answer that, what's your opinion of magic?" Willow asked.

Anita sighed. "Ms. Rosenberg, I'm an animator. I raise the dead every night with magic. In general, I'm in favor," Anita said evenly. She gave herself a pat on the back for not screaming. "Now what are you talking about?"

Willow met Anita's gaze, and suddenly the frailty was gone. "I'm a witch."

If she expected a reaction, she'd be disappointed. Anita remembered how Dawn said that Willow had saved the world from ending, and suddenly didn't find it so impossible to believe. "And?"

"And when I heard Dawn was missing, I ran a tracer spell. I couldn't find her. I thought it was the distance, because New York is really far away, but when I landed here, I did it again, and couldn't find any trace of Dawn." Willow was twisting her fingers together, and a trace of panic crossed her face. "The spell is keyed to-- is designed to find a person's body, so if the person is dead, it will pick it up. But nothing."

"So whatever has Dawn is probably shielding her?" Kennedy asked.

"That's the only thing I can think of."

Anita blinked. "Are you telling me that you're powerful enough to run a tracer spell across the country, and it usually works?" She had heard of such things, but no one living was supposed to be able to do such things.

Willow nodded.

"And you do research? The books and stuff? On demons and bad magic?"

Willow nodded again.

"Most wiccans I know keep as far away from tainting themselves with even the knowledge of that stuff." Anita thought about Marianne, her witch mentor and vargamour to a werewolf pack in Tennessee. Marianne's coven freaked out at the mere thought of raising zombies. They would have run screaming from books on demons.

Something in Willow's face changed, making her look haunted, older than her years. "We can't afford not to know these things," she said. "Pretending the bad things don't exist won't protect you, it'll only ensure that you don't know what's eating you when the time comes."

Privately, Anita agreed, but she wasn't about to tell anyone that. "Okay, so no Dawn. That means she's probably alive, right? I mean, who hides a dead body?"

"She's right, Red," Faith said abruptly. "We're going to find Dawn and she's going to be fine. And I'm the pessimist, remember?" She gently cuffed Willow on the shoulder.

"Yeah," Willow said, shaking her head. "I have to get my stuff ready for the briefing.

Kennedy went with Willow to get the suitcase. Faith stayed with Dolph and Anita. "Man," Faith said, shaking her head. "If something's hiding Dawn, it's going to be wicked powerful to duck under Willow's radar."

"She's that good?" Anita asked in an absent voice.

"Yes," Faith replied warily.

"Good enough to stop the end of the world?"

Faith narrowed her eyes. "What are you talking about?" The cold, dangerous person from the forest crime scene was back.

"Dawn's diary," Anita said. "She said something about Willow stopping the world from ending in her diary."

"You've got Dawn's journals?" Faith licked her lips, and cast a nervous glance over at Willow. "We need to see them."

"They're at that end of the table," Dolph said. Faith brushed past Anita and headed for the books. "You'll notice that she didn't answer your question, Anita."

"Which in itself was an answer," Anita mused.

If Willow was so powerful, how had Anita not heard of her before? More to the point, how powerful could she be and not have gone all dark side? If there was one thing that Anita had learned in her years among the vampires and lycanthropes, it was that power usually corrupted the holder until there was no going back.

 

* * *

  
It had taken Zerbrowski half an hour to round up all the cops on the case and cram them into the briefing room. Anita had stood up and given everyone the low-down on Jamison's zombie, and the reports of animators across the country having similar troubles on the fourth, sixteenth and twenty-second of November. She talked about Francois Duraey, when he went missing from his house in New Orleans, and what they had found at the crime scene in the woods.

Then, she described Dawn Summers, talking briefly about what Dawn had written in her diary, then when she was last seen. She mentioned that no one had seen Dawn disappear, but stressed that not all of the witnesses had been spoken to, yet.

"Why not?" Faith interrupted.

Anita had to hold back the sarcasm. Her attitude so wasn't needed right then. "The main security on the club is vampires. They'll be up soon enough."

"How's Ms. Summers likely to react in the event of a kidnapping?" Fitzgerald asked. Anita had never met him, but he had shook her hand when they were introduced, which was always a good sign.

Willow and Faith exchange another look. "Dawn's very resourceful, always has been," Willow said. "She won't be freaking out."

"Kidnapping isn't like a car accident," Fitzgerald said. "It's a very traumatic experience, both during and after."

"Dawn is in the middle of a demonology degree, Detective," Kennedy interjected. She leaned forward on the table, deadly earnest. "Dawn and I may not be friends, but I've seen some of the things she'd worked on over the past few years. It'd be enough to creep me out, and I do this shit for a living. She'll keep calm."

There was a moment of silence, while Fitzgerald and Kennedy glared at each other, then Anita cleared her throat. "And that's all I got, so I'll turn the floor over to Ms. Rosenberg."

"Hold it," Smith said. He was the new guy in RPIT, and was still somewhat shiny around the edges. "What about last night?"

Every face in the room turned to Anita. Talk about uncomfortable. "What about last night?"

"I think he's talking about the church, Anita," Zerbrowski supplied.

"What about it?"

"What happened?" Smith said, so curious. In that second, Anita could have gladly shot him.

Willow tentatively raised her hand. "Yes, what did happen? I don't mean to put you on the spot, Ms. Blake, except here I am putting you on the spot, but we need to know what it was and how it happened and how you drove it off and all that stuff."

And Anita thought she babbled in some situations. "So, um, I was working, you know, raising zombies, and I was on my last zombie of the night," Anita began. "I put it back, everyone drove away, and then when I took down my protective circle, something knocked me to the ground."

"Hold it," Willow ordered, holding up one hand while she scribbled notes with the other. "What kind of circle? Was it designed to keep things in or out?"

"In, mostly. It's so the zombie can't wander away during the ceremony," Anita explained. The rapt attention of a large room of cops was unnerving.

"Was it a normal circle?" Willow didn't even look up, she was writing so hard.

Anita started to say yes, but realized that it wasn't. "I reinforced it, ran it twice. I've been doing that since Jamison lost his zombie."

"So whatever you did, to keep the zombie in, may have doubled as keeping other things out?"

"Maybe. I wasn't looking to ask questions at the time."

"Okay." Willow stared at her notes.

"Um, so whatever knocked me over, didn't have form. But I've been knocked over by non-corporeal power before. And whatever it was..." God, this was going to sound hokey. "It felt evil."

"It felt evil?" Zerbrowski repeated. "I know you said that last night, but what do you mean?"

Anita tried to find the words to explain. "You all know that when I was in Tennessee last year, there was a demon summoned? The FBI were there, helped clean up the mess?"

Everyone nodded, even Faith. Anita raised her eyebrows at that. "Brad-Brad told me a lot about you," Faith explained, somewhat defensively.

Brad-Brad? Oh, Special Agent Bradley Bradford.

Anita continued. "That felt evil, and I mean really evil. This was the same, but not as in your face."

"Was there anything else? Any overt threat?" Willow asked.

"No. Then I got the phone call from Larry, and I drove to the church. When I got there, a lot of you," Anita gestured at the cops, "Were already there. Then when I tried to go into the church, something was holding me out."

Willow frowned, and looked up at Anita, standing in a thin beam of sunlight from the windows. "Then what?"

Anita shrugged. Talking about this made her uncomfortable, and she didn't understand why. "Then I prayed, and the crosses glowed, and the evil holding me out went away."

"We're still getting reports of crosses glowing in a mile-wide radius," Smith said. He gave Anita a ghost of a smile. "People from across town are flocking to the church."

Damn it. "Your point?" Anita asked, folding her arms across her chest.

"Either it's a diffuse evil," Faith said, "Or very evil."

"Or a diffuse, non-corporeal embodiment of evil," Kennedy added.

"You don't think..." Faith started. She and Kennedy turned to stare at Willow.

"It's not the First," Willow said.

"You sure?" Faith asked.

"Yes. The First didn't make people explode from the inside," Willow said.

"The first what?" Dolph asked, interrupting the banter.

Willow smiled slightly, but it was not a happy expression. "The first big bad we faced as a team," she said. "It's not that."

"Well, good," Anita said. "Any more questions?"

"What did you pray for?" asked a cop. Anita couldn't place his face. He raised his eyebrows at her.

Anita tried for anger, to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach. It had felt so right at the time, but talking about it now made her  feel silly. "I asked for protection, you know? Maybe God could have helped us out a bit?"

The cop lowered his gaze, and Anita stalked over to an empty chair by the wall. _Why am I feeling so awkward about this?_ she wondered. _I'm not ashamed of what I did. So why is it so hard to talk about?_

As Willow started setting up her papers at the front of the room, Anita let her eyes unfocus as she thought. _Maybe it's because it's such a private thing, such a private trauma and such a private moment. I did the right thing, last night._ A sense of peace filled her as she thought those words, and she realized she was smiling. _I did the right thing_.

"Um..." Willow said at the front of the room. Everyone slowly quieted. The redhead smiled nervously and waved. "Hi, I'm Willow. I'm a researcher and a witch, which some of you heard me say before. I've worked with Faith and Kennedy for years, on this stuff." She took a deep breath. "So if I go too fast or if you have any questions, let me know and I'll stop the exposition."

She turned to the white board behind her and started writing. "We have four things here, that look different on the surface, but all have common ties."

Willow faced the audience and pointed at the first phrase, GRAVE-RAGE ZOMBIE. "On the twenty-second, Jamison Clarke, an animator, raised a zombie and it went feral. The zombie itself was destroyed by fire, so there's no way to know if it was a physical attribute of the zombie or something else. I've looked at the reports, and Mr. Clarke said that everything seemed fine until mid-way through. He'd been doing this for years, and while not a particularly powerful animator, knew what he was doing.

"By itself, it would seem that the fault lay with Mr. Clarke, but other events contradict that conclusion," Willow continued. Her hesitant manner was gone now. She pointed at the next phrase, FRANCOIS DURAEY/WOODS BODY. "With the cold slowing the decay of the body, we can't know right now how long ago Mr. Duraey died," Willow said. "But it's in the past few days, possibly as early as the twenty-second. The coincidence that an animator, again, not a powerful one, was killed by something nearby, and a zombie gets loose nearby, is almost too great," Willow said.

"You don't believe in coincidences?" Zerbrowski asked.

"Coincidences are for car crashes," Willow said. "I learned long ago that if you think that bad things are coincidence, you end up getting slapped in the butt."

Anita almost laughed at the phrase. Coming from Willow, it was funny.

"That leads us to the third thing," Willow said, pointing at the board once again, to the words, KIDNAPPED(?) DAWN. "She was at a club for her twenty-first birthday with her cousin and a friend. Cousin Alice told me that she didn't tell Dawn where they were going until they got downtown, so if anyone was looking to grab Dawn, they'd need to be following her."

"I talked to the bartender who was on duty last night," Wahid said. "He told me that it's company policy to keep a close eye on the men in the crowd, in case anyone tries anything. They didn't see anything odd last night."

"Maybe it was one of the waiters?" Smith asked.

"Wouldn't happen," Anita said. Heads turned toward her. "What?"

"Why not?" Wahid asked. He was one of the most serious cops Anita had ever met. Some of the other cops, however, were smirking again.

"I don't think Jean-Claude's hired anyone new in months, and most of the waiters are lycanthropes and vampires anyway," Anita explained, refusing to back down. "No one's going to do anything as stupid as harm a customer."

"And why would it be stupid?" Dolph asked, a warning in his voice.

Anita gave him innocent eyes. "Why, because Jean-Claude would turn them over to the police as soon as he found out," she said with a smile. "You're more likely to find the answer in the crowd."

"I just told you, the bartender said none of the guys in the crowd could have done anything," Wahid said.

 _Is he really this stupid?_ Anita wondered. "The crowd is usually mostly female," Anita told him. "Could it be that maybe, just maybe, a woman may have been involved?"

Wahid looked confused. Anita shook her head. "Whatever happened, probably mostly happened outside," Anita continued. "Alice told me that she took Dawn outside and left her there. But Dawn started acting wonky inside. The easiest answer would be that someone drugged her or something, then followed her outside."

Dolph nodded. "It would be the most feasible," he agreed. "But we are interrupting Ms. Rosenberg."

"Oh, no, I like being the girl interrupted," Willow said. "The more we know, the better it is." She walked forward to her books. "Dawn had asked us to look into demons and the like that could interfere with zombies. Rupert Giles, he's an expert on things that go bump in the night, he and I looked into it. We found a few candidates." She opened the book, an ancient-looking tome. "But what happened last night, it clinches what did it."

Willow tapped the last phrase on the whiteboard, BIG EVIL. "We were looking for a creature that could influence the dead, interfere with not-too-powerful animators, be all over at once, and be evil while non-corporeal."

"Hold up, Red," Faith interrupted. "What about those runes I told you about?"

"The runes from the clearing?" Willow asked, turning to another book and flipping the pages. "It's a good thing I brought my Norse mythology books." She went back to the board and drew the three runes in the position they had been on the tree. "Anyone here know about runes?"

Only Anita, and oddly, Smith, nodded.

"Okay, so I'll explain," Willow said. She put the cap back on her marker. "So Nordic runes like this were used in divination, spell-casting, ritual. When combined with a body, like a sacrifice, it's usually for a ritual trying to invoke something."

She pointed at the first rune. "Ansuz is Odin's rune, Odin being the main god in the Norse mythology. It can be a rune of communication, but in most cases it's used to invoke Odin himself, in his shaman form. The use of Ansuz at the top is indicative of balance, of power, usually magical. There's no emotion, no passion in this rune, it's the distant power.

"Then we have Algiz, below Ansuz. It's used as a protection rune, to channel energy to where you want it to go. It also represents death as the end of life. The rune is usually associated with Heimdall, the Norse god of light, because of his role as guardian at the gate, at the boundaries between worlds and realities. The barrier between the living and the dead.

"Last is Uruz, and it's the odd rune in. The symbol was meant to represent the aurochs, a now-extinct species of wild cows. It represents wild energy, untamed potential and the buried energies within one's self. Like Algiz, it represents death, but here it's an awareness of death that separates us from other animals."

Willow went back to the books and idly flipped the pages. "I'm not an expert, but looking at these like this, carved into a living but sleeping object, the winter tree in this case, it is as if a form of Odin was invoked, to try and channel the potential energy within one. You said that Francois Duraey was an animator, and the reports I read said that he wasn't very powerful. It is possible that whatever did this was trying to draw out his energy, make it usable."

"So what did this?" Zerbrowski asked.

Willow looked a bit flustered. "Oh, right." She stood back up and went back to the white board. "Like many primitive religions, the head god usually had many forms. Norse mythology's a bit scattered on a lot of points, but they have listed several forms that Odin took while doing things. There is only one, however, that was both evil and used to call and communicate with the dead." She uncapped her pen and wrote, in big block letters, BOLVERK.

Anita closed her mouth with a snap.

 

* * *

  
The werewolf packs had a long and varied history across the country, but all kept the traditional names. Ulfric was the name of the pack leader, wolf king. There were various names from Norse mythology for the other wolves, including Fenrir, the challenger to the Ulfric. Fenrir was the wolf who would eat the world, at the end. The nomenclature was typical of the general cheer that pervaded most packs.

Bolverk was an old title, not often used among modern packs. Bolverk did the necessary evil, to keep order and to keep the pack safe. Unsurprisingly, especially considering how squeamish Richard, the current Ulfric and Anita's ex-fiancé and the last third of Anita and Jean-Claude's triumvirate, seemed to be, Anita was the Bolverk. She was also the new Lupa, the pack mother, but it didn't change her role.

Keep the pack safe, no matter the evil she had to do.

So she was downright stunned to see her title on the board like that. Her mind was racing, already trying to figure out if there could be another werewolf in town, some other pack's Bolverk, when Willow continued talking.

"The books I have indicate that Bolverk was an aspect of Odin that was driven out into the ether, back in the days of giants. Bolverk, of course, still wants an outlet for his evil, and stalked the outerlands, looking to corrupt a body that could talk to the dead, so he could continue his work."

"Does it have a form?" Faith asked. She and Kennedy were the only ones who didn't look pole-axed.

"No form, not yet."

"What do you mean, not yet?" Kennedy demanded.

Willow put her pen down. "It's possible that whoever it was, tried to force Bolverk into Mr. Duraey, and that it didn't work. Hence the boom."

"And now they have Dawn." Faith pressed her lips together and shook her head, cold rage radiating from her. "Oh, we are so not letting that happen."

"Wait, you said that Bolverk was drawn to people who could talk to the dead?" Zerbrowski asked. "You mean like animators?"

"Yes."

"But Dawn's not an animator," Kennedy pointed out. "She's not even very witchy."

"What aren't you telling us?" Anita asked, her eyes trained on Willow's face.

The redhead tucked her hair behind her ears. "Dawn's mother died when she was fourteen. Dawn couldn't handle it. She used a spell to raise her mother as a zombie."

"There are spells for that?" Zerbrowski exclaimed. "You don't need an animator for that?"

Anita stood up. "She used a spell to raise a zombie?" she demanded, furious. "Which one?"

"You knew about these spells?" Zerbrowski asked.

Anita brushed off the comment. "My grandmother told me about them. They're prone to failure, are very dangerous, and use some seriously sketchy ingredients. Dawn was messing with this shit when she was fourteen?"

"Yes," Willow said softly. "Which means that if they're trying to find a body for Bolverk, Dawn might just fit the bill."

"Great, so we find the evil, kick its ass, and rescue Dawn," Faith said. She stood up so fast her chair was knocked to the ground.

Willow paled, but stood resolute. "It's not that easy."

Faith put both her hands on the table. "Why not?" she said through clenched teeth.

Willow closed the book in front of her and placed both hands on the cover. "Because if the ritual is completed, the only way we're going to be able to stop Bolverk is to kill Dawn."

* * *


	12. Chapter 12

* * *

It was dark, and it was cold, and it was forever. Dawn couldn't see, couldn't hear, but she knew it was there. Touching her, prying at her, taking her.

Gradually, after an instant and an eternity, Dawn was somewhere again. She tried to frown, but wasn't sure her face accomplished what it wanted to.

"It's not perfect, I agree, but we make do with what we can."

Dawn gasped and whirled around. "Anya?"

And it was, but it wasn't. Anya stood on the middle of the lawn, smiling. "Hello."

They were on the lawn at the house on Revello Street again. Dawn slowly stood up. Her whole body ached. She tried taking a step towards Anya and realized that her feet were still manacled, held by a length of chain.

"Anya, what's going on?" Dawn demanded. The former vengeance demon just smiled at her. The smile was wrong. "Where are we?"

Anya had never really liked Dawn, had treated her as a child for far too long, but she would never have looked at her with such malice and, oddly, desire in her eyes. "Oh, we're in your head. All that you see here, it's the truth that you failed to see."

"You're not Anya," Dawn said softly. The chains clanked as she took a step back.

"No, I'm not," the Anya creature admitted. "But I needed a body, and this is the one your mind gave me. Now why is that, I wonder?" Anya whirled in place. "You never liked her. She treated you poorly. So why would you choose such a creature for me?"

"She's been on my mind a lot, recently," Dawn said, looking around. Just as in her dream after she had been kidnapped, the streets were deserted in the bright Sunnydale afternoon. "Who are you?"

"I don't have a name yet." Anya smiled again, and it made Dawn's stomach hurt. "You will give me a name when you give me form."

"That's not going to happen," Dawn hissed as she hunched over, clutching at her torso. It didn't help the pain at all, but at least she could still feel pain.

Anya shook her head and tsked at Dawn. "Yes, you will. You will decide to give me form, and you will decide to give me life, and anything I do will be your fault."

Dawn didn't say anything.

"Now!" Anya clapped her hands together. "We have a lot to do, so let's get started, shall we?"

"What are you talking about?" Dawn straightened up warily.

Anya pointed at the house. "Go inside, and you'll see."

"What's in there?"

"You know what's in there." Anya took a step closer to Dawn. The hair stood up on the back of Dawn's neck, and she moved toward the house, anything to stay away from it.

Slowly, she climbed the stairs to the front door, which was open. That was odd, and somehow, familiar. "Buffy?" she called. Buffy had said she was going to be home all afternoon, so when no one answered, it seemed strange. She slid her backpack off her shoulder, and dumped it to the ground with her jacket. Buffy was always ragging on her to hang things up, which was rich coming from a girl who couldn't find a hanger in her room to save her life.

Maybe Buffy was upstairs, Dawn thought as she bounced up the stairs. But no Buffy to be seen.

The door to Willow and Tara's room was open, so maybe they had stopped making up or whatever it was they were doing, Dawn thought with a smile. They had looked so happy that morning, and now that Tara was back, it would be great again at the house, just Dawn and Buffy and Willow and Tara, with a hefty dose of Xander visiting all the time. The summer months were usually big-bad free, and Dawn was looking forward to it.

"Hey," Dawn called as she peeked into the bedroom, careful in case they were kissing or being schmoopy. "Hello? The door was..."

There were feet on the floor, Tara's feet.

"Tara?"

Tara, on the floor. Blood on her chest, just over her heart.

Tara dead on the floor.

Dawn stumbled back, choking. Oh God. Tara.

She moved until she hit the wall, and there was no where else to go. She couldn't stop looking at Tara, so still, so dead.

She couldn't even cry.

"You see, what happens?" Anya asked as she knelt down beside Dawn. "They die and leave you alone."

"She didn't mean to," Dawn stammered, the pain of Tara's death fresh again in her mind.

Anya sighed. "Doesn't matter, really. End result is the same." She sat down on carpet. "So, how long are we going to wait? How long did it take them to come back to find you?"

"They were busy," Dawn whispered. "Buffy was shot and Willow was going crazy and hunting down Warren."

"How long did you wait?" Anya asked. "How long did they make you wait with the dead?"

Dawn sniffled, then took deep breaths. Crying over Tara now wasn't going to help her, she needed to calm down.

Anya reached over suddenly and grabbed Dawn's hair, pulling her head back and forcing a gasp from her throat. "I asked you, how long did they make you wait?"

Dawn tried to hold out, until it felt like her head was going to be ripped off. "It was dark," she gasped. "Buffy didn't come until after dark."

Anya let Dawn's head go and the girl collapsed to the ground, so close to Tara. "See how easy that was?" Anya asked, all smiles.

Dawn reached out and touched Tara's hair. It smelled like lavender, like it always had.

Anya started to laugh.

 

* * *

  
The house was dark and flashing, loud and screaming. Dawn screamed back, smashed everything she could, trying to get the noise to stop.

She stumbled and fell. When she looked up again, there was her mother, all glowy and shiny, just like an angel.

Mom smiled. "Things are coming, Dawn."

Dawn stared up at her, confused.

"Listen, things are on their way. I love you, and I love Buffy, but she won't be there for you," Mom said.

"What?" Dawn asked. "Why are you--"

"When it's bad, Buffy won't choose you," Mom continued with a sad smile. "She'll be against you."

The vision of her mother began to fade. "No!" Dawn screamed. "No, don't go! Please, don't go!"

Dawn let her head drop to the carpet and she sobbed. It hurt so much, like losing her mother all over again.

Anya kicked at the edge of the broken coffee table. "Funny, isn't it, how bad that made you feel?" She crossed her arms across her chest as she looked down at Dawn. "When did you start to believe it?"

"I didn't believe it," Dawn said. She was getting angry, for all the good it would do her.

Anya laughed. The sound made Dawn want to vomit. "Of course you did! Now, answer my question."

Dawn pushed her hair off her face and sat up. "When Buffy started acting crazy, with the Potentials after that one girl killed herself."

Anya laughed again. "Ironic, isn't it? That the wrong daughter got the message?"

"What are you talking about?"

Anya smiled that horrid smile again, and the room changed. It was tidied up, and full of people; Faith, Kennedy, Rona, Buffy, Robin, all the Potentials, Xander.

Dawn stood up and walked over to Buffy. "Then you can't stay here," Dawn said softly. "Buffy, I love you, but you were right. We have to be together on this. You can't be a part of it."

Buffy looked at Dawn as if her sister had just driven a knife into her heart. Perhaps that would have shocked the Slayer less. "So I need you to leave. I'm sorry, but this is my house, too."

Buffy took a step back, looked around the room, then slowly staggered out the door.

The chaos in the room went on, but Dawn and Anya were no longer a part of it. "See what I mean?" Anya asked. "You turned on your sister, the sister who had always been there to protect you, who died for you. You drove her out, and that meant Faith led the Potentials into the tunnels, where many of them died. So, really, all that death was your fault."

"No," Dawn said, shaking her head. It couldn't be, that couldn't be right. "The Potentials did what they had to--"

"If you hadn't turned against Buffy, then she would have convinced them to go back to the vineyard," Anya argued. She went to stand behind Xander and examined him as he watched the other scene, oblivious. "Instead, they walked into Caleb's trap. And they died. So not only did you turn on your sister, you helped out the First by letting more Potentials die."

"Why are you doing this?" Dawn screamed. "What do you want?"

Anya was on her so fast Dawn fell over. "I want you, my little necromancer," Anya hissed and grabbed Dawn's head. "You are my only chance to walk again. Too long have I suffered, a wraith on the edges of the world of man, not able to touch, to feel, to feed." Anya let go of Dawn's head and ripped her shirt open. "How long have I hungered for the feel of flesh, of blood." She pulled Dawn's undershirt up and laid a cold hand over Dawn's heart. As she spoke, she pressed her nails into Dawn's skin, as if she would scoop Dawn's heart out whole. "You will give me form, a body, this delicious body, and you will do it of your own free will."

Blood welled up and ran down over Dawn's skin, along the underside of her breast and to the floor. "I will never give in to you," Dawn said, struggling against Anya, but it didn't do any good.

"Yes, you will," Anya said with a smile, then bent down to lick the blood off Dawn's chest.

* * *

The furniture seemed too big, Dawn thought. She was peeking into Buffy's room, while Buffy was a skating practice. Then she saw it.

Buffy's science fair project, the one she had been working on for months. Buffy had told Mommy how it worked last night at dinner. Dawn had said that she could work it, and Buffy blew up at her, saying that it was her project, and Dawn wasn't allowed to touch it.

She'd show Buffy.

Dawn crept over to the box beside the project and looked in. She needed the blue bottle, Buffy had said, but there were two blue bottles. Oh well. She picked the bottle closest to the project. That made sense.

She climbed on top of the table and slowly poured the contents of the bottle over the project, like Buffy had said.

Hmm. The clay didn't bubble like Buffy had said it would. Dawn poured more over the clay, but the liquid just moved like glue. Weird. She wondered if she got the right bottle.

"Dawn!"

Dawn's head jerked around at the screech. Buffy was standing in the door, still in her skating outfit, her face red.

"What did you do to my project?" she screamed. "Mom!"

Mommy came running. "Buffy, what on earth..." She caught sight of Dawn, still holding the bottle. "Oh, dear."

"Mom, she poured glue all over my project! I spent months on that and she went and ruined it!" Buffy burst into tears.

Dawn didn't know what she had done wrong. "I just wanted to--"

"I don't care!" Buffy screamed. "I hate you!"

Buffy ran out of the room, and Mommy followed her. Dawn put the bottle down, still confused, but knowing she did bad.

"It's funny, I wonder if she remembers this like you do?" Anya asked, crouching down by tiny Dawn. "All that work she did, ruined by her kid sister. I wonder if she got over it."

"It was forever ago," Dawn protested. "And it was just a stupid science project."

"Ah, but it was hers. Just one more thing of hers that you ruined."

Dawn started to say something, but stopped. Something was wrong. What was it?

"A bad start to life. I wonder if she remembered these things when she decided to abandon you here?"

"Buffy won't abandon me," Dawn muttered. What was it that was wrong?

"Then why isn't she here?" Anya asked.

Dawn shook her head and looked down at her tiny hands.

That was it.

She had never been a little girl.

Ice-cold clarity rushed through her. This thing was talking like the memory was real. It wasn't, it had never happened. It was a fake memory, made by the monks when they made her out of the Key and Buffy.

This thing was taking her memories and using them against her. It hadn't seen, didn't know. It didn't know what was true and what was lies.

Dawn felt a warm strength start to burn in her. It was small, and very fragile, but it held something that she didn't think the creature understood.

Hope.

"Come on, Dawnie! We haven't got all day." Anya held out her hand to Dawn.

Tentatively, and because she knew now what it was doing, Dawn put her tiny child hand in Anya's grown-up one. Just touching her skin was horrible, like dying, but Dawn didn't pull away.

They were in the caves under Sunnydale, the stupid caves. Dawn sat on a rock, sniffling. Spike walked around her, while Anya sat on another rock and watched with avid interest.

"You wanna know what I'm scared of, Spike?" Dawn asked. The vampire just stared. "Me." Dawn wiped tears off her cheeks. "Right now, Glory thinks Tara's the Key. But I'm the Key, Spike. I am. And anything that happens to Tara... is because of me." Dawn thought of the last time she had seen Tara. Had she said good-bye? Now Buffy was trying to find Willow and Tara, to save Tara from Glory. "Your bruises, your limp, that's all me too. I'm like a lightning rod for pain and hurt. Everyone around me suffers and dies. I..." It was almost too hard to say, but Dawn knew Spike would never lie to her, and she knew. "...must be something so horrible, to cause so much pain and evil."

The scene stopped, or at least Spike stopped moving. "See what I mean?" Anya asked. "That sums it up right there. You may not mean to, but you cause pain and you cause death. Buffy's death, that was your fault. You should have just jumped instead of telling her you were going to do it."

"I tried," Dawn said softly. "I tried to jump, but she wouldn't let me."

"Didn't try very hard, did you?" Anya asked.

Dawn looked back at the frozen Spike. She remembered the rest of the conversation. Spike had told her that she wasn't evil. And even if she wasn't good, that didn't mean she wasn't okay.

She remembered what Spike had told her, how Spike had gone through so much pain for her, at first because she was Buffy's, but then later just for her. Because she was Dawn. She wasn't just a Key, not just the little sister. She was Dawn.

She swallowed that knowledge down, deep inside where the creature couldn't touch it.

"All right, let's start over. We're going to do this until you realize exactly how futile your fight is." Anya said. And just like that, they were back on the front lawn of Dawn's house, and the door was open again.

Dawn climbed the stairs to the front door, which was open. That was odd, and somehow, familiar. "Buffy?"

* * *


	13. Chapter 13

* * *

"...so that leaves these two military consultants to work with the cops tonight on the kidnapping, while the crime scene techs work on the woods scene," Anita finished. She had been telling Micah what the afternoon's work had accomplished. The Jeep sped along the darkened city streets on the way to the Circus of the Damned, Micah taking the long way to avoid the Friday night revellers.

"How did Faith deal with being told that Dawn may have to be killed?" Micah asked softly.

"Badly doesn't quite cover it." Anita could feel the ardeur stirring up inside her, a sluggish thing, and she wondered how Jean-Claude had kept it in control for her over the last few hours. Her hands were tucked under her legs on the seat, so she wouldn't accidentally touch Micah while he was driving. "She shut up about it for the rest of the briefing, but afterwards she yelled at Willow for twenty minutes."

"Must be hard to have to think about killing someone you love, to protect other people," Micah said.

Anita went cold. Less than a month before, while Vittorio and his little band of merry serial killer vampires were in town, Jean-Claude had admitted that she was his fail-safe, so that in case he went mad, there would be someone to stop him. She hadn't told anyone about it, didn't want anyone to know that she would be able to step in front of the man she loved and blow his head off with a shotgun, even if it condemned her and three other people, Richard, Nathaniel and Damien, to death.

Some days, she didn't even want to admit it to herself.

"Are you okay?" Micah asked as he parked the Jeep in the employee parking lot.

"I'm fine," Anita said. She undid her seatbelt and slipped out of the car before Micah had the keys out of the ignition.

The key to the back door of the Circus was on her key chain, and normally she could work the lock even half asleep, but her coordination was off and she dropped the key chain onto the ground. Frustration rose up in her, and she kicked at the door.

"Hey, take it easy," Micah said, taking her hands in his. The ardeur recognized him, the feel of his skin on hers, and it rushed out, catching Anita's breath.

She had enough of herself left to pull away. "Not out here," she pleaded. Everything was overwhelming her, and she knew that if she let go, everything would break.

Micah unlocked the door and let her go inside. He then locked the door behind them, and went to the inside door that led down to the Master's lair.

Anita brushed past him, trying to give him as much room as possible, which wasn't much in the narrow doorway. She stumbled on the first step and almost pitched down the stairs, but Micah caught her again.

"Anita, you're going to hurt yourself," he told her firmly.

She knew he was right, but still she pulled away from him. "I have to walk down these stairs myself," she argued, though it didn't make much sense, even to her. "I have to."

Micah pushed her hands out of the way and scooped her up into his arms. "Normally, I'd listen to you, but you aren't making any sense," he told her as he walked down the stairs. They were the same height, and he probably only outweighed her by ten pounds, but, big strong wereleopard that he was, he carried her easily. "Zerbrowski told me what happened at the church, and in the woods. You're acting crazy. You need to take care of yourself."

"I have more important things to do," Anita told him. Wasn't that obvious?

Micah's hand tightened on her upper arm. "Nothing is more important than your well-being."

Anita disagreed, but it didn't seem worth the effort to tell him that.

* * *

 

Jason was waiting for them when they made it downstairs. "Geeze, Anita, you look like shit."

Micah set Anita on her feet and she managed to not fall over. Brownie points for her. "Where's Jean-Claude?" she asked.

Jason raised his eyebrows. "That's it? Where's Jean-Claude? No scathing retorts? Threats of bodily harm?"

Anita shook her head. She was so tired she wanted to throw up. "Jason."

He must have heard something in her voice, for his joking manner vanished. "He's upstairs, talking to the cops about Ms. Summers. He told me to tell you that you can use his bed, and that everyone's fine and the ardeur will be fine."

"Thanks, Jason." Anita walked past the young werewolf toward Jean-Claude's bedroom.

"Richard also wants to know how you are," Jason called after her.

That was about the only thing that would have stopped her. "I'm fine," Anita said. "Tell him that he doesn't need to worry about me draining energy from him anymore."

Anita started moving again, and only just caught Jason's reply as she walked through the drapes. "That's not why he was worried."

* * *

 

She was trying to undo her jeans when Micah came into Jean-Claude's bedroom. He sat on the bed and watched her undress.

After fighting with her zipper for a minute, she slumped to the floor and dropper her face into her hands. She didn't want any of this, to be so tired, to be so stupid. All she wanted to be was asleep, but it wasn't that simple.

There were hands on her shoulders, her front, undoing her buttons. "Let's get you out of these clothes," Micah said as he slid the shirt off her shoulders.

Anita let him stand her up and help her slide out of her jeans. The air was cold, and she started shivering. Micah guided her to the bed and she crawled under the covers. Usually, she liked the silk sheets Jean-Claude used on his bed, but now she just felt cold.

Micah joined her under the sheets, and she let him curl around her, so warm. He kissed her shoulder, and the ardeur roared back to life, all heat and need. It drove the air from Anita's lungs and her eyes closed under its weight.

When she opened her eyes again, Micah was leaning over her. She put her hand on his chest and held him off, just so she could look at him.

"What?" he whispered, his eyes so dark.

Anita ran her fingers through his curly hair. "When Chimera ordered you to seduce me, did you ever imagine it would turn out like this?"

He swallowed hard, and Anita could see his Adam's apple bob in the dim light. "What are you talking about?" He held his body rigid, not moving away from her, but not letting himself touch her any more.

The question had made a lot more sense in her head. "That he'd be dead, and we'd be together?"

"Anita, why are you asking this?"

Anita stopped her hand before her fingers moved toward his nose. She remembered, dimly, what he had told her at Larry's wedding, about how his old alpha, Chimera, had once cut off his nose, then beat him when it started to grow back, so the nose stayed broken. She remembered the pain in his voice at what he had been through.

So why the hell was she bringing it up now?

"I don't know," she admitted. "Nothing makes any sense." She propped herself up on her elbows. The sheets slid down to her waist, and Micah couldn't seem to stop his gaze from drifting down her body. "I'm glad you're in my life. Not because of the ardeur, but because I'd miss you if you were gone."

Micah smiled weakly. "I'm glad you're in my life too, just because." He leaned down to kiss her, and everything else became unimportant as the ardeur welcomed that kiss.

* * *

 

Afterward, Anita lay curled up in Micah's arms. The ardeur had been sated, for a little while anyway, but Anita couldn't find sleep.

Her thoughts kept circling around, back to what might have happened that day. If the ardeur hadn't been controlled. In the car with Zerbrowski. In the briefing room with all the cops she knew. At the crime scene with Trooper Knight. So much potential for so much to go so wrong.

There was a sense of movement in the room, and Anita realized that Jean-Claude was sitting in one of the chairs by the wall, staring at her.

She sat up, pulling the sheet with her and disturbing Micah. "How long have you been there?" she demanded.

Jean-Claude moved his fingers away from his mouth, but otherwise sat as still as a painting, considering her. "Long enough."

There was something in his voice that she normally wouldn't have thought about, or let bother her, but right then, with all the ugliness in her head, she couldn't let it go. "You watched?" she asked, incredulous. Even though he had done it before, watched while Micah had made love to her, it made her feel... she couldn't put a name on what she was feeling. Whatever it was, felt icky.

"It was quite the show."

Anita scrambled out of the bed, pulling the sheet with her. She so didn't want to be naked around him right then, not when he was saying these things.

"Actually, ma petite, I came to ask you something." His pleasant tone didn't change, and neither did his expression. He was shielding himself from her, and she couldn't figure out why.

"What?" She managed to put anger in her voice, but it didn't stop the bad feelings in her head. He was mad and she didn't know why.

Jean-Claude stood up and paced slowly across the room. When he spoke, his voice was as cold as death. "Do you have any idea how much you have endangered us?"

Anita took an involuntary step back. "I told Micah, I didn't know that touching the circle would be so--"

Jean-Claude moved so fast that Anita didn't have time to react. He grabbed her by the arms and yanked her against him. "Do you have any idea how much you have endangered us, inviting these Slayers into our midst?" he hissed. His fury danced over her skin like glowing embers, and she cried out.

Jean-Claude shoved her back and she fell on the bed, knocking the wind out of her. She couldn't say anything. He had never treated her this way.

"You have brought the wrath of the Slayers upon me, Anita," Jean-Claude continued, all pretense at calmness gone. "The Slayer's sister, taken from outside my club, in my city! Now they come, to find her and destroy whosoever stands in their way!"

"What are you talking about?" Anita demanded, pushing Micah's helping hands away and standing up.

Jean-Claude stopped pacing, still as the grave. "Do you truly not know what a Slayer is?"

"Eighties' hair band?" Anita asked, still confused.

Her attempt at humour didn't work. "The Slayer, ma petite, what monsters fear. A creature who walks with darkness, she dances with death, feeds on blood, revels in the hunt. For as long as there have been vampires, there has been the Slayer, keeping us in check, killing those who prey upon humans."

Anita still had no idea how any of this was her fault, but she was getting scared. Jean-Claude never spoke this melodramatically unless there was something seriously scary in town. "Is it like some kind of monster?" she asked.

Jean-Claude gave her a wry smile. "No. It is a girl, a human girl, who is summoned to this dark calling. When one dies, another takes her place. It has always been such, always, but now there are dozens of them. Dawn Summers is the sister of the Slayer, the oldest Slayer ever. Do you know what that means, Anita? That means a girl who has been slaughtering my kind for over ten years. What were you doing when you were sixteen? Were you slaughtering vampires in the night?"

"I was sort of in high school-- What does that have to do with anything?" Anita demanded. "This Slayer, Dawn's sister? She can't kill vampires any more, that's murder." Then something else that Jean-Claude had previously said finally penetrated her addled mind, and the clues started falling in place. "Bradford, he said that Dawn's sister was the leader of the group of military consultants... Oh God, are you talking about Faith and Kennedy?"

"So those are the names of those who would destroy us?"

"They work with Buffy." Anita fought not to hunch her shoulders. "But they're working with us, to find Dawn, I didn't know they killed vampires."

"She didn't know," Jean-Claude repeated, throwing up his hands. "Well, that makes it all right, when my people start to die, because you didn't know!"

"Hey!" Anita shouted. "If we find Dawn and stop this demon thing, then there's no reason for them to do anything to the vampires. No vampire in this city, none of yours, anyway, had anything to do with Dawn's disappearance." Anita clutched tighter at her sheet. "And if I didn't have to deal with this stupid ardeur, then maybe I'd be out there looking for Dawn right now."

Jean-Claude reacted as if she had slapped him. "So the Slayers being here is my fault, as I gave you the ardeur, is that what you are saying?"

Anita shook her head. "No, that's not--"

"It is," Jean-Claude said. A look of such pain flashed through his eyes, then was gone. "I knew you would blame me for the ardeur, if not right away, then eventually." He visibly pulled himself back, wrapping himself in his Master of the City guise once again. Anita didn't know what to say to stop it. "Very well, Anita, I will leave you to your Nimir-Raj and your sleep, and tomorrow you can see what you can do to locate Ms. Summers."

He turned around to leave, and Anita finally found her voice. "Jean-Claude, don't go."

Jean-Claude did not turn around. "And for what possible reason would I remain?" His words cut at Anita like ice.

He strode from the room, and Anita felt his departure as a physical blow. "Jean-Claude, wait, wait!"

She took a step forward, but she tripped over the sheet and she crumpled to the ground, sobbing.

The next thing she knew, Micah was at her side, lifting her and the sheet back onto the bed. "Anita, you need to get some sleep," he murmured into her ear.

"What if he's right?" Anita asked around her tears. She used to think that if Jean-Claude abandoned her, she'd feel empty, but it felt like someone had shot her in the stomach. "What if it's my fault everyone dies? Because I asked them to stay?"

"Anita, you're not thinking clearly," Micah argued as he smoothed the sheet out around her. "You're doing all you can, you're working yourself too hard, and you didn't do anything wrong in inviting the Slayers to town." He pulled the blanket up so that it covered her shoulders. "Jean-Claude can protect his people, he will do everything he can. He has the police on his side now, he can work it so no one is harmed by these Slayers."

"But Micah..."

"Anita, you're not making any sense," Micah said firmly.

"One day, I'm going to say something he's not going to forgive, then what am I going to do?" The tears were hot, sliding down her cheeks, but they didn't ease the pain inside.

"Jean-Claude's not going to leave you over this, Anita. It's like you're drunk, with everything that's happened. He'll forgive you this."

Anita rocked back and forth, just a little. God, she hurt so much. "Micah, I'm so tired," she said, crying. "I'm so tired."

Micah kissed Anita's forehead and pulled her into the curve of his body. "I know you are, honey, I know. Sleep now, and it'll be better tomorrow."

Anita buried her face in his shoulder. "What if it's too late by then?"

For the first time in years, Anita cried herself to sleep.

* * *

  
The light in the room were on dim when Anita woke up, which told her that it was still night. She reached out, up, and sensed that the sun wouldn't rise for another hour yet. She'd been asleep for almost eight hours.

Thinking about how long she had been sleeping made her remember what had happened before she passed out. She had to close her eyes against the memories. It was just like her to mess things up so badly.

Micah was still sleeping soundly. Anita slid out from between the sheets very carefully, so as not to wake him. She pulled some fresh clothes from the stash she had started leaving in Jean-Claude's closet, picked up her gun, and headed for the bathroom.

The bright lights left her blinking. Leaving her clothes on the counter, Anita ran the bath. While the water was filling the tub, she pulled her hair up into a bun so it wouldn't get wet.

The lights weren't the most flattering. Every scar on her body stood out vividly, and Anita let her fingers trace the scars. Most times, she didn't look at the scars in the mirror. She knew where they were, could describe in exact detail how they happened. But the mosaic of pain, engraved in her skin, was always there, no matter how she might try to ignore it.

She shook her head. She didn't have time for the melancholy self-reflection. She needed to shower, get dressed, drive to the police station and get back to work on finding Dawn before Bolverk possessed her.

Bolverk. Jesus. She had known that the old religions had gotten their named from somewhere, but she had not thought that about what that meant. Or else the demon caged its name from the old gods? Either way, it made her head hurt.

She turned the water off and climbed into the bathtub. Normally, after such a wretched day as Friday, she would have enjoyed the relaxation of a good soak, but she didn't have time. She needed to get to the police station and see if they had found anything out since she'd left.

 _Maybe they'd have found Dawn and prevented Bolverk from getting out,_ Anita thought wistfully. With her luck, it was unlikely in the extreme.

She made a mental note to call Larry, and to see how he was. _Maybe he can come help us out._ He was a federal marshal too, come to think of it.

Anita rested her head against the edge of the tub for just a second. "I don't have to do this all myself," she said aloud, but hearing it didn't make it real. "I don't know if I can do this by myself."

Unbidden, Anita remembered the fight she'd had with Jamison at the office, the day after his zombie got loose. Dawn had been watching, so quiet in the background, but then the phone rang and she had answered it like she dealt with this stuff every day. Her demonology work, her research on the zombie... she was smart, Anita had to admit. Hopefully those smarts extended to resourcefulness.

The last time Anita had been kidnapped was in New Mexico by a vampire with delusions of godhood. She'd killed his ass, but it had been scary. She still woke up with nightmares sometimes, of a thousand eyelids covering nothing but stars.

With a sigh, Anita stepped out of the tub. All clean, ready for a new day.

She got dressed in the bathroom, pulling on a turtleneck, then a t-shirt with penguins on it, then a sweater. Her jeans and belt were black, like her mood. _Morose, melancholy, angsty..._ Anita listed her choices as she slid the belt loops of her shoulder holster onto her belt. The gun made her feel better, like it always did.

After one last look in the mirror, Anita dumped the wet towels and her dirty clothes in the hamper. If only it was as easy to throw away the other things she'd said and done yesterday.

 _One day, I'm going to say something he's not going to forgive, then what am I going to do?_ she had asked Micah the previous night. Jean-Claude had put up with so much from her, and she didn't know why. If he had treated her the way she treated him, back at the beginning of their relationship, she'd have dropped his ass in a heartbeat.

Micah rolled over when she came out of the bathroom. "Hey," he said, stretching like a cat.

Despite her mood, Anita smiled at him. "Good morning." She sat on the edge of the bed and kissed him.

"Good morning indeed," Micah said when she eventually pulled back. "How are you feeling?"

"A bit embarrassed for acting like such an idiot last night." Anita ran her fingers over his collarbone. "Thanks for putting up with me."

"Anytime," Micah said. He caught her hand up in his. "If I make a suggestion, will you listen?"

With a build-up like that, Anita knew that she really didn't want to hear it, but she made herself nod.

"You need to eat a lot today," Micah said. "I know you're going to be busy, but if you don't keep your energy level up, you'll have another day like yesterday."

"I know, I know." Anita sighed. "It's just that it's so hard, to change years of habits in, like, a month, after I formed that second triumvirate--"

The door slammed open, and Anita had her gun drawn before she was fully turned around.

It was Jason, panting. "Anita, you got to get up there, he's talking to that Slayer, and I'm not sure--"

"Jason, hold on!" Anita shouted, jumping up. "Who's where with what?"

"Jean-Claude," Jason gasped. "Talking to that Faith lady, upstairs in the arena. It's like some weird confrontation. Jean-Claude drove everybody off, all the vamps, all the wolves."

"He's alone?" Anita demanded as she pulled on her jacket, which held her cell phone, and more importantly, an extra clip of silver bullets.

"No, I think Asher's there, but I don't know if that'll be enough." There was real fear, in Jason's eyes. "He made us leave him, Anita, we'd have stayed but he wouldn't let us."

Anita swore under her breath. "Fine, stay here."

"Anita--" Micah began.

She cut him off. "You too! If Faith attacks Jean-Claude, I can't protect you too."

She turned and ran out the door. There was the long flight of stairs and half the circus to get through before she could get to Jean-Claude. What could go wrong in that time? Oh, so very much.

* * *

The only good thing that Anita could think of after she finished her run, was that her knees didn't hurt. _Let's hear it for the third mark,_ she thought. Of course, her lungs burned, her muscles ached, and the adrenaline surging through her veins had her taut as a wire.

She hit the concrete steps to the arena at a run, but her runners didn't make a sound. The ring came into view. The show lights were on, illuminating the floor. Jean-Claude and Faith were about ten feet apart, circling each other slowly. "... you cannot hope to understand what it is you are dealing with," Jean-Claude hissed. His voice held the edge of power, but it was as if the power was accidental, not that he was forcing his power on Faith.

"Well then, why don't you tell me?" Faith asked, her voice heavy with sarcasm. Her hands were empty, but Anita knew that didn't mean anything. She'd seen vampires rip people's heads off, and if Faith was one of these Slayers, then they might be just as strong.

Not that Anita would let Faith that close to Jean-Claude. Ever.

There was a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye, and Anita turned her head to see Asher standing in the dark shadows of the concrete seats. He shook his head at her, once, but didn't move to get in her way.

Anita didn't understand why he wasn't in the ring with Jean-Claude. Wouldn't Faith see then that she had two opponents, not one? Or was Asher the diversionary tactic?

"She will not allow any harm to come to your little girl," Jean-Claude continued, as if Faith hadn't even spoken. "She will fight with all that she is, give more than she has, risking her life for people she does not even know. Why do you expect she would do less for someone that she knows?"

Now, Anita was just confused. Who was Jean-Claude talking about?

"No way," Faith said. "Buffy sent me to find Dawn, make her safe, stop the demon. I'm not going to work with some brainwashed bitch who's in bed with the monsters in this town!"

Oh. They were talking about her. Anita had always considered it rude to talk behind someone's back, so she transferred her gun to her left hand and jumped the rail down to the ring.

The movement distracted Faith, and she turned her head. In that instant, Jean-Claude moved in a blur of motion, catching Faith's hand and puling her arm away from her body, while using his other arm to grab her hair and stretch her neck out, just below his mouth.

Anita's gun was up and aimed before she could even think. "Let her go, Jean-Claude!" Anita shouted.

Faith struggled, but Jean-Claude squeezed her wrist so hard his fingers went white. "Do you see what she is doing?" Jean-Claude asked Faith in a stage whisper.

"Damn it, Jean-Claude, I'm serious!" Anita shouted. The gun was pointed directly between Jean-Claude's lovely, midnight blue eyes, now glowing solid with power. "Let her go!" At this distance, the bullet would blow a fist-sized hole in the back of his head.

"She will kill me, to save you, do you see this?" Jean-Claude licked Faith's neck, just over her pulse. The woman's eyes went wide, but she never looked away from Anita. "To save you from the big, bad monster, she would put a bullet in me, even though it will kill her at the same time."

In another blur of motion, Jean-Claude picked Faith off the ground and threw her across the ring. She rolled as she landed, getting to her feet in one smooth movement.

Anita whirled around and brought her gun to bear on Faith. The woman made a movement, as if she was going to charge Jean-Claude. "Don't," Anita said, her voice hard and low. She breathed out slowly, more than ready to shoot Faith if she threatened Jean-Claude.

"This woman is the best chance you have at finding Dawn," Jean-Claude continued. "She will never stop, never rest, until Dawn is safe or her death has been avenged."

Faith took a step back, her hands at her sides. "So, she's going to do that by shooting me?"

"Only if you threaten Jean-Claude," Anita replied.

"Hey, he's the one who jumped me," Faith countered.

"And now you're unjumped." Anita lowered the gun, but didn't put the safety on. "No one's going to die here, got it?"

Faith didn't say anything.

"What are you in town to do?" Anita asked. "Kill Jean-Claude? Or find Dawn?"

"Damn it, you know it's to find Dawn. But what the hell am I supposed to think, finding that the town's dammed Master owns the club where Dawn was grabbed?"

"Gee, I don't know, maybe that since he owns half the vampire businesses on the waterfront, that it was a coincidence?" Jean-Claude started to walk toward Anita, but she glared at him. "Don't."

She was so furious at him, half because she was sure he had staged this whole thing to prove something to Faith, and half because she had been ready to end it, then and there, with one bullet.

He nodded. "You are, in your words, ma petite, burning moonlight. The sun approaches, and your work is not nearly completed."

Faith frowned. "You expect me to work with her, after she aims a gun at me?"

"I told you, I'm willing to work with you so we get Dawn back, remember?" Anita asked. She slipped the safety onto her gun and put it back in her holster. The crisis seemed over. For now. "The other option is that you go home. I'm still not kidding about that."

"Fine." Faith looked over at Jean-Claude. "But if I find out that you've been keeping any information back--"

"If you find that I have been keeping any information back, then Anita herself will deal with me," Jean-Claude interrupted. "You forget your place, Slayer."

"And you forget yours, vampire."

"Would the both of you please shut the fuck up?" Anita demanded. "Faith, if we're going to do this, we are going to go. Now. We're on Dawn's clock and it's running down."

Faith backed up to the edge of the ring. "I'm ready when you are."

Anita turned to Jean-Claude, still so very angry with him. "Ma petite..."

"Shut up," she said softly. "If you are keeping anything at all back on this, Jean-Claude, and it hurts Dawn, you are going to have to deal with me, understand?"

"Completely."

She was so sick of this grandstanding shit. She spun on one heel and went to the edge of the ring and hoisted herself up onto the concrete. Faith pulled herself up at the same time, out of the light of the ring.

They were almost at the door when Jean-Claude spoke again. "Faith?"

"What?" she snarled.

Jean-Claude laughed, and it stung like electric shocks along the skin. "I may be willing to assist you in any way possible with Dawn, but if you hurt Anita, I will make you wish you had died in that prison cell of yours. Am I clear?"

 _Prison cell?_ Anita thought.

"Clear as glass, buddy," Faith said before continuing down the stairs.

Anita shook her head and followed. She had only been awake for half an hour, and already she was tired of dealing with vampires, Slayers, and kidnapped girls.

* * *


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

Anita stormed out of the Circus. She knew Faith was following her but she didn't really care. The night sky was just beginning to lighten in the east, the harbinger to dawn. Anita came to a halt beside her Jeep and whirled on Faith.

The dark-eyed woman glared at her. "What?"

Anita put her hands on her hips. "I cannot get in this car with you until we get some things straight."

"Like what?"

"Why are you so damn hostile towards me?" Anita asked. "We're on the same fucking side, I thought we cleared that up yesterday."

"That was before I found out that you're that bastard's slave," Faith shot back.

The night's sleep had done wonders for Anita. She was feeling like her old self. And her old self was getting mad. "I'm only going to say this once, because if you don't get what I'm trying to say now, you never will. I am not Jean-Claude's slave. I am his human servant, not his slave. We share power, a partnership. Got it?"

"How can you be tied to him like that and not be under his control?" Faith demanded.

"You do know what a necromancer is, right?"

Faith just scowled.

 _God give me strength_ , Anita thought. "I have more independence. I can make my own fucking decisions, and I have decided that I will help find Dawn, stop this ironically named evil, and make the world safe for babies and kittens again. If I have to, I will accept your help to do so. Full stop."

Faith shifted her weight from foot to foot. "I just heard..."

"What? That I'm a brainwashed bitch who's in bed with the monsters?" Anita said sarcastically.

Faith winced. "Yeah, sorry about that."

"Why are you even here? What on earth possessed you to come here and talk to Jean-Claude today? Alone? Where's your partner, and Ms. Rosenberg?"

"I wanted... I came to talk to that bastard to ask him for help in finding Dawn, okay?"

"He's just going by Jean-Claude these days, you know."

Faith leaned against the Jeep. "I wasn't... I wasn't going to go all crazy, I know better than that. Kennedy was working with Zerbrowski, they were going back to the woods scene to look over stuff. I just came to talk to him. That's all. Ask him for help, it being his club Dawn got grabbed by, say please and thank you. Something about him just-- I lost it."

"Losing it like that with the Master of the City is a great way to get dead." Anita pulled her keys from her jacket pocket and ran them between her fingers.

"I know that." Faith glared at Anita again. "And why are you treating me like a kid?"

"What else am I supposed to do? You come in yesterday, riding rough over everyone, then you pull this crap this morning, facing Jean-Claude one-on-one. It's not exactly the best plan ever."

"Like you've never gone in, guns blazing."

Anita narrowed her eyes. "Are you talking about something in particular?"

"When I said Bradford told me about you, I meant it. Everything. I saw every file that the FBI have on you, and it makes for some interesting in-flight reading."

"And?"

"And I've seen places where you went in to the lion's den, no backup, nothing. I've been doing this since I was a kid, all by my lonesome. Yeah, two against one isn't the best plan ever, but I've done it before."

"Two?" Anita asked. She'd seen Asher in the shadows, but Faith hadn't made any indication that she knew there was another vampire.

Faith raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, two. No matter what people say, I'm not dumb. I'm talking about Blondie up in the shadows."

Ah. Anita sighed. "This is getting us nowhere."

"Agreed. So, do you want to arm wrestle it out, or are we going to come to an understanding?"

"You want an understanding? Fine. I need you to put the portion of your brain that thought that little thing with Jean-Claude was a good idea, and put it away. Bradford said you're the best there is. So show me."

Faith pushed herself off the Jeep and stood up straight. "If you stop treating me like a lackey and start treating me more like an equal, you've got a deal."

She held out her hand. It wasn't the best idea ever, but it was all Anita had. After a second, Anita grasped Faith's hand. "Deal."

They let go, and Anita hit the little button on her key chain that unlocked the doors. Faith stretched her hands up above her head, letting a little writhing wave run down her body.

The morning was moving almost too fast for Anita, and something from the conversation finally caught up with her. "So, you asked Jean-Claude for help? What did he say?"

Faith shrugged. "He said that of all his resources, you were the best one. He had nothing else to offer but you."

Anita shook her head. _Machiavellian undead bastard_. "Wasn't that nice of him?" Anita stopped herself. "Okay, I'm cold and hungry. Get in the Jeep, we'll go get some food and discuss what's been going on over the night."

Faith went to open the passenger door.

"Wait."

"What?" Faith asked. An edge of hostility resurfaced in her voice, but it was substantially less than it had been a few minutes ago.

"I can't get in the car without knowing what weapons you have on you," Anita said. "It's a thing."

Faith looked Anita up and down. "As long I get to do you, too."

Anita pulled her jacket back, ignoring the cold. "The gun. And a knife at my waist. I left the others at home."

"Nice gun," Faith said, "Especially when it's not pointed at me." She put her foot up on the Jeep's side. Pulling up her pant leg, she said, "There's the knife on the leg, standard issue." She let the pant leg fall down. "Another knife at my back. I've also got these little throwy things on my belt, that no one even uses because they're finicky like a son of a bitch."

"That's it?" Anita asked. "No gun?"

"Don't use guns."

Anita frowned. "Then what do you use?"

Faith struck a pose. "Hon, I'm the only weapon I need."

"Even so, I'd rather have some extra bullets to back me up," Anita said as she opened the Jeep door. "Just in case."

Both Faith and Anita were silent as Anita drove out of the Circus employee parking lot. "Were you serious about food?" Faith finally said.

"Yeah. Something about a fight back at the Circus prevented me from my morning bowl of wheaties."

Faith rested her elbow on the car door. "I asked around about you, you know, last night."

Anita concentrated on driving.

"Those cops, down at RPIT, some of them really don't like to admit that you know what you're doing, you know? But they do. That Zerbrowski hottie said you were their expert on the creepy stuff, and since this hit really close to home for you, you'd be sure to find the big bad soon enough."

"Back it up, did you just call Zerbrowski hot?" Anita demanded.

Faith shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

"So he's not hot, he's Zerbrowski."

"Yeah, but those glasses? Sexy."

"Okay, you're just making this up to bother me," Anita said.

"Maybe a bit." Faith smiled, slightly, but it took about five years off her appearance. "And maybe you'll stop threatening to shoot me."

Anita sighed. "I only did that so you wouldn't lunge at Jean-Claude and hurt him. Or yourself."

"So you wouldn't have shot me."

"Oh, I didn't say that." Anita glanced over at Faith. The woman was looking at her with very serious eyes. "I've got a rule. Never point a gun unless you're willing to deal with the consequences of firing it. If you had gone for Jean-Claude, I would have shot you."

"That means that you would have shot him," Faith replied.

Anita returned her eyes to the road. "Yeah."

Faith tapped her fingers on the dash. "What he said, about you dying if he died?"

"What about it?"

"He wasn't kidding, was he?"

Anita didn't know how to respond, so she kept her mouth shut. Never a bad choice on her part.

Faith swore under her breath. "He was fucking serious. Shit, you'd have shot him. You'd really have shot him."

"What do you want me to say?" Anita demanded.

"How about why you haven't been hauled off to the loony bin over this?"

Hands tight on the steering wheel, Anita counted to ten to calm down. "Just because I'm in love with someone doesn't mean my sense of right and wrong goes out the window. Jean-Claude knows that."

She turned into a parking lot off the street.

"Where are we going?" Faith asked.

"I told you. Breakfast."

"What about Dawn?"

Anita undid her seatbelt. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Yesterday on the plane."

"Part of the reason I was all messed up yesterday afternoon, that I responded to you the way I did, was that I didn't have enough to eat," Anita said. "If you're swooning all over the cops, it's not going to help Dawn."

"Hey, I don't swoon," Faith snapped.

"Fainting in a manly way, then," Anita said as she got out of the Jeep.

Faith said something, but Anita didn't hear it.

* * *

"So what did you all do last night after I left?" Anita asked, taking her first sip of coffee. Bliss.

Faith stirred sugar into her coffee. "All kinds of stuff. Where do you want me to start?"

"Anything on the body yet?"

"Not last I heard. It's not like watching CSI, where they get DNA results in a minute. The morgue's still trying to figure out what killed Duraey."

"Could it be the fact that his torso exploded?" Anita had to ask.

"Well, you know, what caused his torso to blow." Faith tapped her spoon on the side of her mug a few times. "They found some debris on the body, in the clothes, that they thing didn't come from the woods. Once they figure out what it is, they may have a better chance at finding out where he was before the woods."

Anita dug a pen out of her jacket and started making notes on her napkin. "So, body debris. Do they know when he died?"

"The estimate of the twenty-second looks like it might be it," Faith said. "It's been so cold, especially down by the river, that it's hard to tell."

"So Duraey dies on the twenty-second. The night Jamison's zombie goes wacky. Then a few days later, Dawn vanishes and the evil attacks Larry. Why then?"

"You mean why not when Duraey died?" Faith asked. "I've been thinking about that. So we have a demon that needs to be raised right? And someone human needed to grab Dawn, not just this nebulous cloud. Maybe after Duraey died, they needed to find someone else and Dawn fit the bill?"

"Maybe." Anita caught the waitress's eye and signalled for more coffee. "Ms. Rosenberg said--"

"Call her Willow," Faith interrupted. "She still thinks Ms. Rosenberg's her mother."

"Okay, Willow. She said that they needed a weak animator, not too powerful. I was looking at Dawn's notes, and she drew a line of where the power in our office lies."

"I saw the notes," Faith said. "It's a good point, and I've fired off a call to Giles to ask him for more backup research, but he didn't answer."

"Right, so there were four animators in the office that seem to fit the bill. So why grab Dawn? She'd only been working there for a week."

Faith shook her head. "I don't know. But we'll figure it... Wait, are they guys? At your office?"

"Yes," Anita said. "I'm the only woman at the office."

"Oh, what did Willow say?" Faith said to herself. "Something about the essence of energy, the feminine and masculine."

Anita felt uncomfortable and she wasn't sure why. "So they needed a female for Bolverk?"

"Maybe," Faith said. "I mean, hey, no one does necessary evil quite like us girls."

"How do you mean?" Anita wanted to disagree, but she had done the research. Very few of the Bolverks in the history of American werewolves were female, but they were the ones who everyone talked about. Her. Raina. That pack down in Texas Jean-Claude had told her about. They did what needed to be done for the safety of the pack, no matter what.

"I had a friend once tell me that the only reason there are rules to war is because guys start wars," Faith explained. "If women were in charge, there'd be no war, not because we'd be eating ice cream over Dynasty reruns, but because the problem would be stomped out before it become an issue."

"That's pretty harsh," Anita said.

"Come on, tell me I'm wrong." Faith gave Anita a look. "Tell me that us chicks aren't just as capable of necessary evil as guys."

"So Bolverk needs a female, okay," Anita said, ignoring Faith's challenge. "So they grab Dawn, why? Hoping she's what they want?"

"I don't know." Faith toyed with her coffee cup. "We can figure it out after we find Dawn."

The waitress came with their plates, stalling the conversation. Faith eyed Anita's plate.

"Three eggs and a steak? Please tell me you're not on that Atkins diet."

"What's that?" Anita asked as she sliced into her steak.

"It's a recent fad. Never mind." Faith put ketchup on her hashbrowns. "Want to hear about the rest of last night?"

Anita nodded, mouth full.

"Those two non-RPIT cops, they talked to the vampire bartender at the club, who remembered Dawn. He had a vague impression that some lady bumped into her just before she started acting wonky. They're reviewing the security tapes now, to see if they can ID her. But there was also a guy talking to Dawn, someone who works at the club, but the bartender and Jean-Claude both told the cops that it couldn't have been him, because he was at the club all night in the DJ booth, getting ready for his set last night or something."

"Gregory," Anita said.

"The who now?"

"Gregory, she was talking to Gregory. I called him yesterday. He said that she smelled sober, but he wasn't there for very long."

"Did the cops talk to him?"

"Yeah, I did." Anita made herself put the steak knife down. This protective urge she was feeling over Gregory wasn't helping anybody.

Faith bit her lip. "I want to talk to him. He was the last person to see Dawn."

Anita let a breath out. "Fine, after breakfast, we'll go talk to him."

Faith bent her head and began to shovel food into her mouth.

Anita watched her, trying to be unobtrusive about it. Faith was right, Anita had been treating her like a kid, an amateur, every way that she herself loathed about the way older cops always treated her. _It's good to know that in the face of adversity, I can be counted on to be completely hypocritical and irrational,_ Anita thought bitterly. As much as she wanted, she couldn't blame the whole thing on the ardeur or on Jean-Claude or anyone. _Damn it_.

"So you said Kennedy's with Zerbrowski?" Anita asked.

"Yeah. They took Willow to the woods, to see if she can figure out the circle that made you all flailing yesterday. These cops you got, they're really well organized. Two thumbs up."

Anita frowned. "Is that such a hot idea? With Willow, I mean. It's powerful magic out there."

"Willow'll be fine," Faith said, although she didn't sound convinced. "She's gotten a lot better in the last few years at not letting the magics overwhelm her."

Anita paused, fork mid-air. "Better than when?" she asked.

A worried expression crossed Faith's face, but then it was gone. "Better than she was."

"How powerful is she?" Anita asked. "You read what Dawn put in her journals, about Willow."

The worried expression was back. "Look, I'm no expert on Red, you'll need to talk to her if you want info."

"You never answered my question, yesterday, on if Dawn was right."

"I'm serious, I can't talk about it," Faith said. "Talk to her. Ask her yourself."

"Maybe I'll do that," Anita said mildly.

Faith scrapped the last bite off her plate and pushed it away. "I've known Red for almost as long as I've been doing this gig, and she's in there for the good fight, you gotta know that."

"Okay, so she's a good witch," Anita said. "What about you?"

"I'm not a witch at all."

"I know that. So you're a Slayer?"

She didn't know what kind of reaction she was expecting. Certainly not for Faith to go as pale as she did.

"I suppose that vamp-- Jean-Claude told you what I am?" Faith finally said.

"He had a lot of fancy words for it, none of which made much sense in twenty-first century terms. You want to tell me what a Slayer is?"

"Not here," Faith said. "I'll tell you in the car, just not around people."

"Fair enough." Anita tried to repress her curiosity, but she had to ask one thing. "Are there more of you? Than just you, Kennedy and Dawn's sister?"

Faith pushed her long hair back from her face. "Yeah, there are more."

"How many more?"

Faith sighed and stared at Anita with ancient eyes in that young face. "Not enough."

* * *

After breakfast, back in the car, Faith told Anita about the Slayers, and why there were more than one, Anita wasn't sure what to say. "Wow" seemed a bit juvenile, and "neat" sounded cruel. So she said the other thing that had occurred to her.

"You do realize that I'm going to tell Jean-Claude about this, right?"

Faith leaned back in the seat and looked out the window. "Yeah."

"So are you making it sound scarier than it is, so the vampires will be scared?"

"Everything I said is true," Faith replied. "All facts, no fiction."

Anita shook her head. They were stuck at a train crossing, waiting for a steady stream of cattle cars to rattle past on the tracks. "Seems wrong."

"What?"

"Not getting a choice. I mean, I started with the vampire hunting because I wanted to, not because of some preordained mystical calling."

"Yeah, but you're a necromancer, you told me yourself. This whole raising the dead thing, you were born with that, so how is that any different?"

Anita resisted the urge to squirm. "It's not the same."

"But it's close enough." Faith turned her head to watch Anita. "Why did you choose to do this? Fight the good fight?"

Anita was surprised to find herself giving Faith an honest answer. "Used to be that since I was sort of immune to the vampire eyes, I figured it was something I could do to help people, right? Then, the years passed, and things got more complicated."

"Black and white bleeds to grey?"

"Something like that."

"Did it happen around Addison and Clarke?"

Anita shook her head. "No, after that."

"Falling in love with a vampire?"

"Actually, no. I knew this guy, Willie McCoy. He was a sleaze, a minor sleaze, but a good guy. Then he got himself turned into a vampire. He was the first person I knew before and after. Before I could pretend that they were all monsters, but Willie made me wonder."

Faith sighed. "Rule number one, never get to know them. It just fucks everything up."

"Maybe. So, why did you ask?"

The brunette closed her eyes, as if she was in pain. "Talking to Buffy, seeing Willow again, thinking of Dawn missing, it was just making me think of someone I used to know from back in the day, who made the same choice as you did."

The last train car sped by, and the track arms lifted slowly. Anita put the Jeep back into gear and drove on.

"Did you ever hear of a guy named Riley Finn?" Faith asked suddenly.

"I don't think so."

"Yeah, no one has. Free-range Iowa boy, football star, helps his dad with the farm chores, you know, all Clark Kent without the Superman. Then the idiot went and joined up, be all that he could be. Gets himself sucked into fighting the demons, bad guys, never realizing that the bad guys he should have been fighting were right beside him."

"Let me guess, no happy ending?"

"There was, for a while. He did the right thing, then got out. Then farmboy got himself sucked right back in, in a different guise. Thing is, he loved it. Saving lives, making order out of chaos, that old American dream." Faith rubbed her hand across her face. "He loved it so much that one day, he jumped in front of a Kralak demon to protect his wife, and now he's buried in a South American jungle. And no one will ever know how much he did to protect people."

"I'm sorry," Anita said.

"Don't feel sorry for me. I'm the one who done him wrong." Faith seemed to reconsider. "Actually, I didn't do him wrong at all."

Anita had to concentrate on parallel parking for moment. "This is the place," she said as the car came to a stop.

"Gregory lives here?" Faith asked as she got out of the car.

"Yup. Come on."

"So how you want to do this?" Faith asked. "You good cop, me bad cop?"

Anita tensed. "No."

"But we--"

"No threatening anyone in that apartment, am I clear?" Anita asked, her voice cold. "If you can't handle that, then get back in the car. Gregory's not a suspect, he's a witness."

"Why are you so protective of him?"

Anita went for the door to the apartment building. "It's complicated."

"Then uncomplicate it. Our little deal was that you don't treat me like a lackey, remember?"

She was right. "Gregory's a wereleopard."

"That's what the guys at the station said," Faith said. "So?"

"So that means that he's my responsibility. I'm his Nimir-Ra, his alpha."

Faith raised her eyebrows in surprise. "But you're not a lycanthrope."

Now it was Anita's time for confusion. "How do you know that?"

Faith twitched her shoulders. "No furry vibe."

"So are we okay? You won't scare Gregory?"

"Damn it, Anita, I need to know what he knows, he's the last person to see Dawn," Faith pleaded.

"I know that! Gregory's very submissive, he'll tell us all he knows, as long as I ask him nicely. But if you threaten him, he'll clam up." _This is why I don't work with a partner,_ Anita thought in frustration.

"Okay, you're the expert," Faith said, holding up her hands in mock surrender.

"Come on, then." Anita went to the front door of the building and used a key on her key chain to open the door.

Faith didn't say anything, and Anita counted her small blessings on that one.

* * *

 No answered the knock on the apartment door. "Maybe they're out?" Faith suggested.

Anita frowned. "No, Gregory usually doesn't leave until after noon." She knocked again.

This time, she was sure she heard movement in the apartment, but no one came to the door. Unease was growing in the pit of her stomach. She motioned Faith away from the door, then pulled her gun out and stepped to the other outside part of the door. "Gregory?" she called, "Stephen? Vivian? It's Anita."

Rapid footsteps sounded behind the door, then the chain was undone and the door flung open. Stephen stood there, blue eyes wide. "Anita?"

"Stephen?" Anita said, putting her gun up. "What's wrong?"

Faith came up to Anita's shoulder, and Stephen's panicked gaze slid to her.

"Stephen, it's okay," Anita said, assuming that Jason had called Stephen to tell him about Faith and Jean-Claude's little argument. Stephen was one of Jean-Claude's main feeds when it wasn't Jason's turn, and he always knew all the gossip about the Master. "She's with me, the fight thing's been sorted out."

"What fight?" Stephen asked.

Anita frowned. Something was wrong, really wrong. She took hold of Stephen's arm and turned him around, led him back into the apartment. "Stephen, tell me what's wrong. Is it Gregory? Vivian? Is everyone okay?"

Gregory came out of the kitchen, his blonde hair falling into his face as he huddled against the wall. "He called."

Anita didn't have to ask who "he" was. Their father. More specifically, their child-molesting pedophile father who had pimped his twin sons out to other men as sick as he had been, back when the twins were just little boys. _Fuck_.

"Do you know how he got the number?" Anita asked, pushing Stephen to the couch.

"No," Gregory said. He was trying to hold himself together, but Anita could see the fine tremors in his hands. "I tried to tell Stephen we should leave, but he won't do it."

"I can't leave, what if Vivian comes home and he's here?" Stephen pleaded. Anita put her arm over his shoulder and let him huddle in against her, not as a human cuddles, but like a scared little werewolf seeking comfort.

"I'll have Micah get in touch with Vivian and tell her to meet you somewhere, okay?" Anita said.

Gregory crept across the carpet and sat down next to his brother, hugging him.

"Stephen, who am I?"

Stephen sat back far enough to look up at Anita, his eyes rolling up in very submissive behaviour. "Anita?"

"That's not what I meant." As Stephen opened his mouth to reply, Anita suddenly remembered that she had only been crowned Lupa for the second time the previous week, and that her older title amongst the werewolves was disturbingly identical to the demon Faith was hunting.

"Lupa, you're Lupa," Stephen said, much to Anita's relief. _Okay, no more close slips like that one_ , Anita told herself sternly.

"Gregory?"

Gregory knew what she wanted. "You're our Nimir-Ra." He jammed his elbow against  Stephen's ribs. "I told you we should have called her."

"But you said she was busy," Stephen whispered.

"She's sitting right here," Anita said. "Yes, I'm busy, but I'm not the only one around, you know? You could have called Micah or Richard. Or Sylvie or even one of the Rodere. What else is pack or pard for, if not to protect?"

"It wasn't always that way," Gregory mumbled.

"Hey!" Anita said, suddenly pissed. "I'm not Raina and I'm certainly not Gabriel. You damned well know that I would do anything in my power to protect you two. It may not have been that way before, but it is now and will be for as long as I am alive. Got it?"

The twins mumbled "yes" in a strange harmony, then Stephen settled back on Anita's shoulder. It was her left arm, and she could still grab her gun if she needed it, so it was all good.

"Then I'm going to call Micah, and you can go to the Circus, and Vivian can join you there, s'okay?" Anita pulled her cell phone out and dialed Micah.

While the couch saga was progressing, Faith had closed the front door and was perched on the edge of the coffee table. It was a nice apartment, if a bit sparse. Stephen's girlfriend, Vivian, had made the place a bit more liveable, but Stephen had been on his own for so many years that she hadn't needed to do much.

"Micah? It's Anita. Can you come over to Stephen's and give the boys a lift to the Circus? Why not? Oh, then take them to the house or something. Yeah, he called again. How soon can you get here? Because I need to be on my way again soon and I'm not leaving them alone. Sounds good, see you in a few."

Anita slipped the phone back into her jacket. "See? He'll be here in a few minutes."

"Why not the Circus?" Gregory asked in a small voice.

"Because Jason set the bar on the door just after Micah left," Anita explained.

"Anita," Faith said. Her voice was so different than anything Anita had heard from her. Gentle.

Right. "Gregory, we came to ask you a few questions, about Dawn?"

Gregory looked surprised. "Me? I told you all I know."

Anita nudged Stephen until he moved off of her shoulder. "Gregory Dietrich, this is Faith Richardson. She knows Dawn and Dawn's sister, Buffy. She's working with us to find her. She's the one who wanted to talk to you."

"When did you-- I mean, had you met her before?" Faith asked.

Gregory shook his head. "No, hadn't seen her before. But Jean-Claude..." he looked helplessly at Anita.

"Just tell her everything," Anita said. "Sometimes it's the smallest detail that gives the most help."

"Okay." Gregory curled up into a ball on the couch and stared up at Faith through his impossibly long lashes. "After Dawn and her friends came into the club, they were sitting at a front table by the stage, right?"

"Uh huh" Faith said noncommittally.

"I was backstage, trying to figure out the lighting for the new set. Then just before Nathaniel went on, he was doing his pre-set audience survey."

"We do that just in case there's anyone we need to stay away from, women who are too handsy," Stephen interrupted.

"And Nathaniel told Jean-Claude that he recognized someone in the audience, Dawn, and Jean-Claude suggested that he ask Dawn up for the set."

Faith held up her hand, and Gregory quieted instantly. "How do you mean, ask her up for the set?" Faith asked.

"Ask her up on stage, for part of the act. It's a thing that we sometimes do. Most women like it, and if they're at all hesitant we move on to someone else."

"So you're telling me that Dawn was sitting in the front row of a male strip club on her twenty-first birthday, and this guy Nathaniel asked her up on stage?" It took a second for Anita to identify the amusement hiding behind Faith's words. "Is he hot?"

"Oh yeah," Gregory said without pause.

"Greg!" Stephen exclaimed.

"Well he is. I'd totally do him," Gregory added. Then he caught the expression on Anita's face. "You know, if he wasn't your boyfriend and pomme de sang and all."

Anita shook her head. "Nice save." Faith was looking at her. "What?"

"Nothing. So this Nathaniel stud, he asks Dawn up on stage for some pretend slap and tickle? Did she?"

Gregory shook his head. "No. She shook her head, and so Nathaniel grabs her friend, the blonde one. After the set, Nathaniel comes backstage and tells Jean-Claude what happened, and then Jean-Claude got an emergency call and he told me to go tell Dawn he was sorry for putting her on the spot like that."

"Did Jean-Claude leave?" Faith's question seemed innocuous, but Anita had the distinct impression that the woman was fishing for clues that implicated Jean-Claude. Anita fumed silently for a second, then realized what she was doing. _Because no one gets to accuse my boyfriends of murder and mayhem but me._

Gregory gave Faith an innocent expression. "No, he was on the phone backstage. I needed to ask him something after I talked with Dawn, and he was there to introduce Jason's act."

"What did you say when you went to talk to Dawn?"

Gregory pursed his lips, like he always did when he concentrated. "I told her that Jean-Claude was sorry he asked Nathaniel to single her out. Then she told me that she had met Nathaniel before, at Anita's office. She called Anita scary, then she told me that the Nathaniel thing was cool. I was going to leave, and Dawn asked me a question about Anita. She shook my hand and I headed backstage."

Faith didn't miss a beat. "What question?"

"About how both Nathaniel and Jean-Claude were her boyfriends." Gregory looked over at Anita, who was glaring. He shrugged, as if to say, _You wanted me to tell her everything_.

"Will there be anything else, Faith?" Anita asked.

"How did she seem?" Faith licked her lips, appearing uncertain. Anita wasn't sure where the change in attitude came from. "Happy? Sad?"

"Kind of melancholy," Gregory replied. "Like I told Anita, she smelled sober. Maybe she was glum at turning twenty-one?"

"Maybe. Hell, I haven't seen her in a year. Maybe she was," Faith said with a sigh.

"Are you friends with her sister?" Stephen chimed in.

Faith froze. "I... It's complicated."

A knock sounded at the front door. Stephen jumped as if he had been shot.

Anita untangled herself from the clutching werewolf and stood up. "You two, wait here."

As she passed Faith, the Slayer asked, "You want me to do anything?"

Anita shook her head minutely. "It's probably Micah."

"And if it's not?" Faith's soft voice followed Anita down the hall.

"Then I'm prepared," Anita replied. She drew her gun out of her shoulder holster and held it at her side, pointed down, safety on. After taking a deep breath, Anita peeked through the spy-hole in the door. It was Micah.

Anita unbolted the door and let him in. "Thanks for coming," she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"How could I not?" he whispered. "Where are they?"

"In the living room." Anita took Micah's hand in hers and led him back down the hall.

Gregory was arguing with Stephen, about packing. "Screw this, just shove some stuff in a bag and come to the house. Maybe for a few days."

"But what about Vivian?" Stephen demanded.

"You know what she wears, pack that." Gregory stood up. "Hi, Micah."

"Gregory." Micah turned his gaze, cat eyes yellow with curiosity, on Faith.

Oh. Right. "Micah Callaghan, this is Faith Richardson."

"Pleasure to meet you," Micah said.

"Likewise." Faith got to her feet. "I don't mean to sound callous, but if he's here..."

"Yeah, we have to go. You'll take the boys to the house?" Anita asked, turning to Micah.

Micah nodded. "You be careful," he said.

She wasn't sure what he meant. Maybe it was about eating. Or maybe Faith. "You too."

As reassurances went, it wasn't very successful, but the clock was ticking. Anita smiled at the twins, then left them in Micah's capable hands. Faith in tow, Anita quickly left the building and headed back for the Jeep.

"We didn't learn anything," Faith complained as she buckled up her seatbelt.

"On the contrary. We learned that Jean-Claude didn't abduct Dawn," Anita said with a sideways glance at Faith.

The woman didn't quite blush, but almost. "I had to ask."

"Hey, I know. Fair's fair."

"Yeah." Faith was quiet as Anita did a U-turn on the street and started the drive back to police headquarters. "So why was it such a big deal that their dad called?"

Anita gave an involuntary shudder. The mention of Anthony Dietrich did that to her. "He pimped them out when they were little boys. That's why they're lycanthropes, ole' Anthony didn't do enough research on who he was selling his children's bodies to."

"Tell me you're kidding," Faith asked, horror in her voice.

"Wish I was," Anita said softly. "I wish to God that I was."

"Is your life always this complicated?"

Anita wondered what to say. Finally, she settled on the simple truth. "Pretty much."

* * *

Anita was five minutes from police headquarters when Dolph called her cell. "Got some lab results back." 

"Great, what are they?" Anita asked.

She could almost hear the creases in Dolph's suit squeaking over the phone. "Found traces of steel shavings and sawdust in his clothes, ground in."

"And?"

"And the CSU thinks that such things are used for furniture. There's varnish on the wood."

"So we're thinking a furniture warehouse?" Anita asked.

"Sort of. There's a bunch of old abandoned furniture factories down around East Grand, by the river. You need to go check them out, the other cops are working on the industrial areas, other furniture places. Want the addresses?"

"Hold on." Anita handed the phone to Faith. "Get directions, there's paper in the glove box," she said as she cut someone off and headed for an entrance to the freeway, amid much horn-honking.

Faith was much more polite on the phone to Dolph than Anita would have been. "There's four places," she said after she hung up the phone. She listed them off.

"They're not that far apart." Anita merged into traffic. "So we hit them as quick as we can, then head back."

"Sounds like a plan."

* * *

The first place was a warehouse that Anita was sure should have been condemned. 

"Hello fire trap," Faith muttered. "Is he serious about this?"

Anita nodded. "Dolph's nothing if not a stickler for the right info. Come on, let's go around and see what we can find."

"Don't we have to worry about a warrant or something?" Faith asked, scrambling over a pile of snowy tires.

"We're just checking to make sure Dawn's not here," Anita said. "If we see anything else suspicious, we call for the cops to get a warrant." Anita skirted a few old crates to peer in the dirty windows. "I just wish I had a working flashlight. We took the batteries in the car flashlight out to use at home."

Faith snorted. "Really?"

"That's not what I meant," Anita said, although she blushed a little. "It was for one of those handheld vacuums." Anita turned and cupped her hands around her eyes and put them to the glass, to help her see inside.

When her hands touched the glass, the ardeur rose out of nowhere, so familiar, but so very different than Anita had ever experienced. It burned with a cold fire, craving touch, skin, more than it ever had before.

"Anita!" Someone was shaking her as she lay on the ground. Why was she on the ground? Anita opened her eyes to see Faith bending over her, worry on the woman's face. "What is it? Another magic reaction like in the woods?"

Another wave of burning icy need swept over her, and Anita fought to stifle her scream. The ardeur was rapidly getting worse, although Anita didn't know how it could be happening, she had fed it twelve hours before and it never had reacted like this. Her vampires were all dead for the day, and they wouldn't be able to fly to her in the sun. That left Faith as the only living person within a mile of this place.

Anita braced herself as another wave of cold fire hit her. She couldn't think of what to do, nothing. She felt her body starting to drain away at Damien's power, as happened when her energy dipped too low. She felt him dying, and there was nothing she could do to stop herself from killing him.

For the first time in ages, Anita knew true despair.

* * *


	15. Chapter 15

* * *

Faith shook Anita again, harder this time. "What the hell is going on?" Faith demanded, pulling Anita into a sitting position. "You're all prickly with magic, what happened?"

Anita jerked away from Faith. "Don't touch me," she gasped. She concentrated on squeezing down her link to Damian, tried to stop feeding off him, but she couldn't do it. She just could not do it.

"Hey now, don't fade out on me." Faith balled her hands up in Anita's jacket and pulled her over to one of the crates, pressing Anita's back against the dirty wood. "Is there something I can do?" Faith pleaded. "Come on, point me at whatever's doing this and I'll kick its ass, just stop freaking out."

"Not ... that simple," Anita managed to say before another wave hit her.

"Sure it is." Faith put her hands out to stop Anita from falling over.

When her fingers touched Anita's hand, a cold and painful shock rushed between them. Faith jumped back and landed on her butt on the pavement. Anita looked up to see Faith staring at her with wonder on her face.

"What are you?" Faith breathed, keeping her distance.

The cold was so deep in Anita's veins that she was twitching. It wasn't her cold, it was Damian's, as she pulled his energy into her. _So cold_. "Do you know what an incubus is?" she asked, her voice starting to sound distant.

Faith nodded, getting to her knees. "Yeah, like vamps that feed off sex instead of blood. But I though that an incubus is a guy."

Anita nodded. "When I--" Another wave hit her, and she ended up lying on her back on the ground. "This thing, between Jean-Claude and me, made me like he is."

"So you're a succubus?" Faith asked. "Wicked."

Anita let out a sharp bitter laugh. "So wicked I'm going to kill Damian and then Nathaniel with this." The laugh turned to a sob as she realized what she could lose. Would lose. No more Damian trying to calm her down when she was mad. No more waking up next to Nathaniel, him smelling of vanilla and warmth. No more. All gone. Their deaths, her fault.

"So, what, your energy's low?" Faith asked, bending over Anita, her long hair brushing Anita's jacket. "How do you load up?"

"Kiss. Touch. But it's almost too late." Anita was starting to lose feeling in her limbs.

"A kiss?" Faith nudged Anita's shoulder, made her look up. "I don't usually play for the other side, but I can pinch hit for a kiss."

Anita shook her head. "Doesn't work that way."

"Why not?"

"I don't like girls..." Anita's back arched with the next wave. The pain was inside her now, like icicles growing in her body. God, it hurt.

"For this, you can make an exception." Faith slapped Anita's face gently. The touch brought another spark, but it was still cold, still hurt. "Come on, you're my best chance at finding Dawn, I'm not going to let you die over something I can stop!"

Anita stared up at Faith. Such worry on her face. _I bet Richard would have liked her, he likes small dark girls,_ Anita thought vaguely.

Richard. A surge of hope surged though Anita, pushing back the cold for just a second. She might not like girls, and Jean-Claude was dead for the day, but the other third of the triumvirate might be able to help her.

Instead of trying to hold her mental shields up, to protect the boys as she had been doing, Anita dropped everything, every shield, every barrier, every hesitation. She reached out to Richard with everything that she had, in a way she had never tried before.

She could see him, clear as day, sitting at his kitchen table grading papers. As she watched, he jumped up, spilling papers to the ground. "Anita, what's wrong?" he said out loud. It was as if she was there, on his kitchen floor, but still on the cold ground with Faith. "God, Anita, you're so cold."

 _It's the ardeur,_ Anita thought at him, trying to hold on. He was so warm, so alive, and the ardeur wanted it. _Something set it off and I can't stop it_.

"So feed," Richard urged. "Before you hurt us, feed on someone." He reached his hand toward her, but it wasn't going to be enough.

 _There's someone here, but it won't work._ Anita's hands tightened on something, and she realized that Faith was holding her hands.

"Why not?" Richard asked.

_It's a girl, and I don't like girls. Help me, Richard, the ardeur can't feed on Faith like this._

Luckily, for once, Richard didn't ask any stupid questions. "What do you want me to do?"

Anita opened her eyes again, stared up at Faith. "Make the kiss real," she whispered.

"Are you sure?" Faith replied. At the same time, Richard saw what Anita was seeing, saw the woman bending over her on the cold ground.

Suddenly, Faith was beautiful, in ways Anita had never thought about. She wondered how she could have missed such beauty, when the cold in her suddenly burned hot, the touch of Faith's skin suddenly all she had ever needed.

"Kiss me," Anita whispered, and they were Richard's words. It was Richard that moved Anita's body, lifted her hand to touch Faith's cheek, marveling at the softness of her skin, wondering if her skin was that soft all over her body.

Faith closed her eyes as she bent down. Her lips were soft and warm, and Anita kissed them delicately at first, savouring the first contact, but the ardeur screamed for more, so much more.

Some part of Anita screamed back and she tried to push Richard away, not wanting to hurt Faith. At the same time, she pulled her head away from Faith and that kiss.

Faith appeared momentarily disoriented. "What's wrong?" she asked breathlessly. "Isn't it working?"

"Too well," Anita said. She could feel Richard inside her head, right with her, but she knew that she was strong enough to cast him out.

"Huh?"

"I don't want to hurt you." Anita looked up at Faith, and was distracted by her lips, the way her tousled hair was flung over one shoulder, cascading down over the curve of her--

"Hey, Slayer strength here," Faith said. "I can take anything you can throw at me."

Anita didn't know what she would have done next, for Faith made the decision for her. The Slayer grasped Anita's face in her hands, and bent back down for another kiss.

Unlike the first, this one wasn't gentle, or tentative, or soft. Faith kissed Anita as if both their lives depended on it. Anita had never thought that kissing a woman could feel like this, small hands on her face, the graze of teeth over her bottom lip, the indescribably warm taste of her mouth.

And just like that, with the kiss alone, the ardeur clicked. Faith convulsed as the warmth rushed into Anita, filling her up, making her warm again.

Faith collapsed on top of Anita, pressing them both into the snow.

Anita could feel Faith's breasts pressed against hers, through their jackets, and the sensation felt just right. The thought wasn't hers, and Anita realized that Richard was still in her head. He was back in his chair in the kitchen, head in his hands. It took Anita a second to realize that he was chuckling. _What?_ she thought at him.

He pushed his hair back from his face and looked up at where she should have been. "I'm with you for that, and you ask me what I find so amazing?"

Anita tried to be annoyed, but he had helped her save Damian's life. _Thanks,_ she thought, then pushed him out of her head, his laughter echoing.

"Okay, everybody off the animator," she said. Her voice was a bit too breathy for her taste.

Faith rolled over her back, and just lay there. "Give me a minute to catch my breath," she said. "Wow."

Anita sat up a bit quickly. "Are you okay? Did I hurt you?" She asked, bending over Faith.

"Hurt? This isn't me acting hurt, trust me." Faith slowly sat up. "If you can do all that with just a kiss, I'd be scared to see what you can do going all the way."

Anita blushed, and turned away. Now that Richard was gone from her head, the insane urge to get naked with Faith out there in the open had also thankfully vanished.

"So how was it, batting for the other team?" Faith asked. There was a definite smirk on her face.

Anita blushed harder. "It wasn't horrible," she admitted.

"Good to know I haven't lost my touch," Faith replied. The smile on her face slowly slid away. "But why'd it happen?"

Anita used the crate to pull herself up. "I don't know," she admitted. "It never felt like that before." She offered a hand to Faith to help her stand.

Faith gave her a look before she took the offered hand, but it was just the touch of skin on skin. "Okay, so when did it start?" she asked as she brushed snow off her pants and jacket.

Anita thought about it. "We came over around here," she said, tracing the trail in her mind. "Around the edge of the building..."

"And you went to the side of the building." Faith went back to the dirty windows.

"It was when I touched the glass," Anita realized. "I touched the glass and that's what started it."

"Evil glass. Huh." Faith shrugged. "Learn something new every day, I suppose." She went over to the window and leaned up to peek inside.

"Careful," Anita said sharply. "Remember what happened less than five minutes ago?"

"Yeah, I'm not touching." Faith went up on her tip-toes. "I can't see anything. I'm going to go up higher to see."

"What are you looking for?" Anita asked.

The look Faith gave her was cold, predatory. "Looking for Dawn, or any sign she was here, remember?"

Anita glared back. "Fine, you go up, I'll take the perimeter. Yell if you see something, otherwise I'll meet you back here in ten minutes. Deal?"

In response, Faith put her foot on a snowy ledge and propelled herself into the air, as gracefully and powerfully as a lycanthrope. She caught the edge of a metal fire escape and swung herself up onto the rickety structure.

After she was kneeling on the fire escape, Faith made shooing motions with her hands. Anita sighed. Careful not to touch the building, just in case, Anita walked along the wall, looking for recent signs of any disturbance. She also took great pains to avoid thinking about what she had just done.

With Faith. Someone who she had aimed a gun at less than three hours ago. Of course, she'd threatened to kill a lot of the people she had kissed. Damian. Jean-Claude. Hell, even Micah.

Anita stopped that line of thought. There was to be no further kissing of Faith. It would be like kissing Zerbrowski. Or Dolph. Or even Arnet.

 _But none of them would have kissed you back like Faith did,_ Anita thought. She stopped in her tracks and shook her head, hard. She didn't have time for this crap. Later, she'd think about kissing girls and all the other lines from her Midwestern American upbringing she thought she never would have crossed. After they found Dawn. Only then.

* * *

 "Find anything?" Anita asked Faith softly, a quarter of an hour later.

"I think so. Old bloodstains, days old," Faith whispered, crouched down beside Anita. Her breathing was slightly faster than before, and she was up on the balls of her feet.

Anita had seen that sort of behaviour before, in lycanthropes who were about to shift before the hunt. "Are you going to be okay?" she demanded.

Faith whipped her head around to stare at Anita. The hair falling across her face did nothing to dispel the wild air about her. "Something happened in there, you know that," Faith said, voice low. "Whatever happened made you cold, and that wasn't an accident, was it?"

Anita hung her head. "Probably not."

"So what do we do?" Faith asked. "Your show, sunshine."

"Don't call me sunshine," Anita said, but her heart wasn't in it. "We both agree that something's happened here."

"Days-old blood? Magics that make the succubus all crazy? I'd go with yes.

Anita winced. "Can we keep the succubus thing quiet?" she asked. "The absolute last thing I need is for all the cops I know to know this about me." She rubbed her hand across her face. "Isn't it bad enough that I'm just coffin bait to them?"

Faith was quiet for a moment. "Do they actually say those things to you?" she finally asked. There was pain in her voice, pain that had nothing to do with the situation.

Anita looked into the distance to avoid Faith's eyes. "Not recently. I say we call the cops. Maybe your friend Willow can make something of the magic on this building."

"Yeah, I'm in. What are we going to tell the hottie?"

"The-- His name is Zerbrowski. Call him Zerbrowski." Anita reached into her jacket and pulled out her cell phone. "We are going to tell him that there's magic and blood and he should come down here now and bring your friends."

"Like I said, since there's no Dawnie, it's your call."

Anita raised her eyebrows at Faith, who only grinned. _Damned cocky, after just one kiss_ , Anita thought. She wondered if threatening to shoot Faith would help at all.

* * *

Willow stood in front of the dirty glass, just where Anita had been an hour before, and frowned.

"Getting anything, Red?" Faith called from her place on an old crate.

"If you don't stop interrupting, I'll be here all day," Willow replied.

"She likes to concentrate," Faith said confidentially to Anita, who was leaning against the same crate.

"And I'd like her to concentrate on the matter at hand," Anita snapped.

"So?" Faith teased. Since the cops had shown up with Willow and Kennedy, Faith had relaxed far too much for Anita's liking.

"So shhh."

Willow turned back to the window. She held her hands up, scant inches from the glass, and started taking deep breaths.

"What's she doing?" Anita asked a few minutes later.

"Reading the magic," Kennedy said briskly, coming up alongside the crate. "She did the same thing out in the woods. That was a nice piece of work, by the way. Real powerful magic, she said, to be able to target only necromancers."

"Yeah, I've been thinking about that," Anita said. "Duraey, he was trained by a co-worker of mine, John Burke."

"We met him last night," Faith interrupted. "He came down to the morgue when he heard about the body. He always so moody?"

"Only when he has to identify the bodies of friends." Anita stared at Faith.

Faith looked away first, back to Willow.

"Anyway," Kennedy said slowly, "You were saying?"

"John's vaudun, straight-up voodoo practitioner. I'm sure he trained Duraey the same way. Most of us practicing in North America are the same."

"Is vaudun different than necromancy?" Kennedy asked. She adjusted the black strap of the long case over her shoulder and linked her fingers over the end of the case.

"Not so much... It's a bit of a misnomer, because they're not really comparable," Anita said, falling a bit into teacher mode. "See, necromancy is the art of the dead, as it were. In English, the word has come to signify all control or power over the dead. That spell you said Dawn cast over her mother, that's a form of necromancy."

Faith shivered and shook her head. "Just seems wrong."

"What now?" Kennedy asked. "Necromancy?"

"Nah. Platelet trying to bring Joyce back. You never met her, Kenn, but she was good people. Most supportive mom I ever seen. D'you know she even used to help Buffy whittle stakes, after she found out?" Faith shook her head again. "Sometimes you just got to leave people to rest in peace."

Back over at the wall, Willow lowered her hands and turned her head toward the crate, just a fraction. Anita was the only one who saw it.

"You spent too much time around Spike," Kennedy said. "Way too long."

"Did you just call Dawn 'platelet'?" Anita demanded.

"Well, yeah," Faith said. "I had other nicknames for her, but Spike's always seemed better received."

"I had some nicknames for Spike," Kennedy muttered under her breath.

"You just never liked him 'cause he sided with Buffy against us." Faith drummed her heels against the crate. "You were giving us the exposition, Anita."

"Right." The conversation between Faith and Kennedy had so much history behind it, that Anita wished she had more time to figure out what they were talking about. Like who Spike was. And why, and when, he had sided with Dawn's sister against the two dark-haired Slayers. "Necromancy. Vaudun's a form of necromancy, ritual and specific potions. There's other sorts of necromancy, but voodoo is the easiest form to use."

"What do you use?" Kennedy asked bluntly.

The question flustered Anita for some reason. "Most of what I do is vaudun. My grandmother trained me, and she was a vaudun priestess. But I've modified the ritual. No ointment, and unless it's a really old zombie, I've cut back on the animal sacrifices."

"I've always wondered, what do you do with the chickens and such after the zombie's done?" Faith asked. "Barbeque?"

"Ugh, no." Anita felt her stomach rebelling at the very thought. "The blood belongs to the zombie, and the flesh is corrupted, unclean. To eat of the flesh of a zombie sacrifice becomes the same as eating the zombie flesh itself."

"That's disgusting," Kennedy said, wrinkling her nose. "I'm going to leave you two to chat."

"Thanks for driving her off," Faith said when Kennedy had vanished around a corner. "She's a good fighter and stuff, but a real stick in the mud."

"I didn't mean to drive her off," Anita said, frowning.

"Whatever. Hey, necromancers."

"Right." Anita pulled her jacket a bit tighter around her neck. "It's like science."

"Necromancy's a science?"

"No, and be quiet." Faith pantomimed locking her lips and throwing away the key. As silly as it was, it made Anita smile. "If you think of necromancy as analogous to science, then vaudun can be the same as biology."

"Cool." Faith hopped off the crate. "What do the other 'branches' of necromancy call themselves?"

"Umm, well, just necromancy."

Faith raised her eyebrows. "Not that I have anything against you necromancer types, but you all need to come up with a new naming system, because the old one sucks." She nudged Anita with her elbow and smiled a smile that no woman had ever directed at the Executioner. "How you feeling?"

"Fine," Anita said shortly. She so didn't want to talk about it. With Faith, right then, ever. She wasn't sure what she would have said next, because all of a sudden, Willow was standing right before them.

"What have you been doing?" Willow hissed at Faith, her hands balling up into fists.

"What are you talking about, Willow?" Faith asked, taking a step back.

"What am I talking about?" Willow repeated. "You've got..." Willow waved her hands in the air. "Post-happy face," she finally settled on.

If it hadn't been so damned serious, Anita would have laughed at the witch's choice of words.

"Willow--" Faith said, trying to calm the other woman down.

"And the only person you were with was--" Willow's jaw dropped and she whirled on Anita, then turned back to Faith. "You're straight!"

"Willow, if you'll just shut up and listen--"

"I knew Buffy shouldn't have trusted you come and try to find Dawn!"

Faith froze. Time stretched out for a long second, as Faith grew paler. "If that's what you think, then I guess that's it," Faith said. Her words were careful. Fragile.

Shit. Anita would have given anything to have taken the kiss with Faith to her grave, but not at this cost. "She saved my life," Anita told Willow.

Willow turned around again, her eyebrows up. "How? And what does that have to do with this?"

Anita squared her shoulders. "Do you know what a succubus is?"

* * *

"Oh."

"That's what I said." Anita crossed her arms across her chest. "All clear?"

Willow nodded. "I've never met a succubus before. Sorry I was all angry. It's just, you know. Dawn."

Anita nodded. As much as she had hated telling Willow the whole embarrassing tale of the girly kiss, at least the witch had promised to keep her mouth shut around the police.

Faith had been leaning against the crate the whole time, staring at the ground, very careful not to react to anything Anita said. It had disturbed Anita, the lack of reaction, until she remembered what Willow had said.

The Executioner didn't know what the history between Willow and Faith was, or with Dawn or any of them. And quite frankly, she didn't care. But she owed Faith. Not for the kiss, or for anything like that.

She owed Faith because Faith hadn't left her to die on the cold ground.

"I think Faith's the one you need to apologize to," Anita said.

"What?" Faith said, finally showing some signs of life. "No, you don't understand, Anita."

"You're right, I don't understand. I don't want to understand whatever beef you and Willow have with each other." Anita caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Zerbrowski was approaching, a determined look on his face. "But if you're going to apologize to anyone, Willow, then it should be Faith."

Willow nodded slowly, never breaking eye contact with Anita. "You're right," she whispered. Turning to Faith, she said, "I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay," Faith said, trying to make light of it, clearly uncomfortable.

"It's not okay," Willow said. Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. "Dawn's missing and I'm scared that I'm never going to see her again and that's no excuse. I may never trust you, but I trust Buffy and if she sent you here to find Dawn, then that's what's going to happen."

"We're going to find her, Will," Faith said.

"What am I going to tell Buffy if we don't?" Willow asked, fighting to hold back tears. "I'm supposed to be this big powerful witch, and I can't even find Dawn."

"Hey, you listen to me," Faith ordered, stepping closer to Willow. "She's Dawn. She's the smartest kid I know. Resourceful, determined, strong. All of those things Buffy has? Dawn's got them too. Only she's been wiggling out of situations like this without Slayer strength for years. Dawn is the best equipped person on this planet to beat these guys. We are going to find her and you'll see that I'm right."

Willow nodded. "You're right," she said with a sniffle. Anita watched as Willow visibly pulled herself together. "How'd you get so smart about Dawn?"

Faith smiled wryly, but there was no amusement in her eyes. "Do I need to remind you who organized Dawn's first hostage-taking?"

Whatever Willow was going to say was interrupted by Zerbrowski's hasty arrival. "I've got it!" he exclaimed.

"What?" Anita asked.

Zerbrowski brandished a folded piece of paper. "Warrant. The warehouse is ours."

Anita peeked around Zerbrowski's shoulder. Two more squad cars had arrived and the uniforms were piling out. "Gang's all here," she observed.

"Yeah. You all done your little female bonding moment?" Zerbrowski asked.

Anita examined him, then shook her head. Even with the glasses, and even if he was a bit hot, as Faith had said, he was still Zerbrowski. It'd be like admitting that a brother was hot. Wasn't done. "Lay on, MacDuff."

Zerbrowski gave her a curious glance. "If I recall correctly, MacBeth didn't turn out too well in the play."

"I'll make an effort to avoid killing the king," Anita said sharply. "What are we waiting for?"

As Zerbrowski turned to give instruction to the cops, Anita shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with the cold.

* * *


	16. Chapter 16

* * *

Over and over, Dawn lived the pain of her past, the creature that had taken on Anya's form always whispering in her mind. With every freshly remembered pain, it voiced the same simple request, one to which Dawn could never submit: _Let me have you._

After forever, Dawn began fading back and forth into reality, or what seemed like reality. She wasn't sure anymore. The concrete floor was cold underneath her, the stench from the rotting talismans thick in the still air. The manacles chaffed at her wrists and ankles. The pain was the only thing that kept her in herself, there on the floor. If there was pain, she was still alive, still frightened, still fighting.

Dawn stared out at nothing, not seeing, when something moved in the shadows. Wondering if the creature had found a way out, Dawn slowly turned her head.

"How are you doing?" Isaac asked softly as he came to the edge of the vile circle. His voice moved like wet silk over Dawn's skin.

She didn't answer him.

He sat cross-legged on the ground, just out of reach. "Does Bolverk have you yet?"

"Bolverk?" Dawn repeated, her voice rough with disuse. She coughed hoarsely.

Isaac smiled at her, his dead eyes moving down her body, to where her skirt had ridden up on her thigh. "That's its name. Bolverk. Evil-doer."

Dawn licked her lips, wincing as her tongue touched the wound where James's backhanded punch had split her lip. "Not yet."

Isaac's beautiful smile grew. "It will, you know. It's gotten enough power now, after it killed the other one, to get out. Sooner or later, it'll win."

"How will it win?" Dawn asked. She was feeling dizzy again. She wondered when she had last eaten. Time was all woozy.

"It will take form and unleash its chaos upon the world."

"Yeah, got that." Dawn swallowed. When was the last time she had anything to drink? Shouldn't she be thirsty? "How exactly will it take form?"

"It will take over you." Isaac's smile changed, became something scarier. "Take possession of that lovely body. Then it will be able to act."

Oh man. Possession was not of the good. "Was that what it tried to do with the last one?"

Isaac nodded. "Bolverk did not like that one."

"But how are you sure it won't be the same with me?" Dawn asked. The world was looking a bit more solid now. Daylight was shining through the dirty windows, high up on the walls.

"Because you're a girl." Isaac stretched his arms above his head. "Bolverk likes girls. We should have read more into that before we took the other one. But we didn't."

"And now he's dead." Dawn closed her eyes. Her head was starting to hurt. "Why are you doing this?"

Isaac stood up. "Power. That's all."

Dawn had to look up at him, and it was unconformable. She didn't like having to look up to anyone, chained and cold on the floor like this. "That's never all."

Isaac shrugged. "No, but it's answer enough." He turned on his heel and walked into the darkness deeper in the warehouse.

 _Bolverk._ Dawn wracked her brain, trying to think of where she'd heard that name before. It sounded very Norse. Probably something to do with Odin. Rites that had anything to do with Odin never ended well.

She couldn't make herself care very much, which was probably bad, as midnight was fast approaching. Instead, she laid back on the floor and looked up at the ceiling, so far above her.

So far away.

* * *

Time passed. It always did, slowly. Did time ever stop? Dawn watched dust moving lazily in the air, the only indication that time was moving at all.

Then, quiet footsteps. It was probably Isaac. Dawn wondered if he was going to move the talismans and try and finish what he started earlier, before James stopped him.

A noise, like something being kicked over. "Dawn, get up."

Dawn turned her head at that. She knew that voice. She blinked a few times, and Anita came into focus. The Executioner knelt by Dawn's head. "Are you hurt? Can you sit up?"

Dawn didn't move. "You're not real," she muttered listlessly.

"Yes, I am." There was a sense of urgency in Anita's voice.

"Are you Bolverk?" Dawn asked.

Anita frowned. "Well, yes, but--"

"Go away then," Dawn said, closing her eyes. "I'm not going to listen to you anymore."

Anita grabbed her shoulders and pulled Dawn into a sitting position. "I'm not that Bolverk," she snapped. "And I'm not leaving you in here. What will I tell your friends? Now snap the hell out of it!"

"Friends?" Dawn put out her hands to stop the world from spinning, but was stopped as she reached the end of the manacles' chain.

"Yes, friends," Anita replied. She picked up Dawn's wrists and examined the manacles. "Faith and Kennedy and Willow. They came looking for you. And if Faith hadn't insisted on going onto the fucking roof, she'd be here right now."

"They're really here?" Dawn asked again. Her mind was stalled on the fact that she hadn't been left alone.

"Yes." Anita stood up and fiddled with the hook that was holding the chain between Dawn's manacles. "Just give me a minute and I'll get you out of here."

There were so many things that Dawn wanted to ask, but she couldn't figure out what to ask first. Instead, she watched Anita working on the hook. She should probably be helping, but she couldn't figure out what to do. But she should be helping, right? Anita needed her to help, right?

The chain dropped suddenly. Anita went back to her knees, smiling triumphantly. "One down," she murmured as she tugged on the bolt on the floor that held the other chain down. "Don't suppose you have a wrench?"

Dawn shook her head. As she did, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. But it was too late.

James came out of nowhere, swinging a length of wood. Anita didn't have time to react as the wood caught her on the side of the head, the force of the blow knocking her out of the circle and across the floor. She slid to a stop in a boneless heap, not moving.

Breathing heavily, James dropped the wood beside Dawn, one end spattered with bright red blood. "I will not allow anyone to stop us," he said to Anita's unresponsive body. "Isaac!"

Isaac came running. His eyes were wide as he took in the scene.

"We need to vanish," James ordered. "If she's here, then others cannot be far behind."

He reached down and grabbed Dawn by the hair, pulling her to her feet. As Isaac began to chant in an unfamiliar language, Dawn looked at Anita. Her dark curly hair was covering her face, but a slow trickle of blood began to flow out from under her hair along the concrete.

Dawn couldn't even tell if Anita was breathing.

* * *


	17. Chapter 17

* * *

Someone was shaking Anita over and over, and it was making the skull-splitting pain in her head so much worse.

She must have moaned or something, because the shaking stopped. "Are you dead?" someone asked. "Why aren't you dead?"

Anita pushed the hair out of her face and tried to sit up. The pain pounded in her head and threatened to fall out of her mouth, so she lay back down. "Where's Dawn?" she asked weakly.

"Dawn?" The speaker was Faith, Anita realized. "Dawn was here?"

"Yeah, I got her hands loose then something hit me." Anita tried to sit up again and this time managed to make it. She looked around. "Probably with that."

Faith picked up the nearby piece of lumber and looked at the blood spatter on one end. "Well, if they were here, they're gone now." She dropped the wood and swore. "I didn't even see them leave!"

Anita couldn't take her eyes off the pool of blood on the concrete. Was that from her head? She reached tentative fingers toward it. "Dawn didn't want to come."

"Huh?"

"Dawn didn't want to come with me at first," Anita said. She touched the pool of blood. It was still sort of warm. She must not have been unconscious for long. "Then I told her you all were here and she seemed to change her mind."

"How hard did you get hit?" Faith asked suspiciously.

Anita wanted to shake her head, but stopped herself just in time. "Don't worry about me, just go."

"What if they come back?" Faith demanded.

In answer, Anita pulled her gun, ignoring how she almost dropped it. "Then I shoot them."

Faith eyed Anita strangely. "You'll call the cops, then, right?"

"Yeah."

Anita watched as Faith took off at a run. It was easy to watch her run, but there was something she was supposed to be doing. Oh yes, call the cops.

She had to lay her gun on the ground to find her cell phone. Carefully, so as not to drop it, Anita pulled the phone out and placed it on the ground. What was the next step? Call the cops. Call Zerbrowski.

She stared at the phone for a second. Damn it, she didn't remember his fucking number. She'd called him before that day, so she should just be able to hit redial. The phone went blurry, and she had to hold it closer to her eyes to find the right button. There it was.

As it rang, she placed the phone next to her ear. The ring sounded too loud. "Zerbrowski," the voice came over the phone.

Anita licked her lips, faintly tasting blood. She wondered where it came from. "Hi."

"Blake, is that you? What's up?"

Why was she calling? Faith told her to. "I found Dawn."

"You found her?" Zerbrowski asked sharply. "Is she okay?"

"They took her away again," Anita said. She put out one hand to stop herself from falling over. The concrete felt cold and gritty under her hand. "Faith went to find her."

"Faith went to find her? Why didn't you go?" Zerbrowski demanded.

That was a very good question. "I got hit," Anita mumbled. She felt sick to her stomach, but was that good or bad? She needed to pull herself together.

"You what?" Zerbrowski asked, his voice taking on a whole different tone. "Where? With what?"

"In my head, by a two by four, I think."

"Are you at that last warehouse you and Faith were going to check out?"

Anita nodded, then really wished she hadn't. "Yeah, that's the one."

She sensed, rather than heard, the movement, and dropped the phone. She grabbed her gun and aimed it with both hands in the direction of the noise.

"Hold up, cowgirl, it's just me." The voice sounded like Faith's, but Anita couldn't see who it was, the room was all blurry.

"How do I know it's you?" Anita demanded, feeling panicked. If she couldn't see Faith, how would she know if it was really Faith?

"Who else is stupid enough to keep coming at you when you got that manly gun in your hands?" Faith asked. The blurry shape came closer, and it did look sort of like Faith.

Anita wavered, then slowly put the gun back on the ground. Faith rushed over. "No Dawn?" Anita asked.

"No Dawn," Faith said. "They must have hightailed it. Did you call the cops?"

Anita looked down at the phone, lying forlornly on the ground. "I think so."

Faith picked up the phone. "Hello?" she said. "Whoa, hold up. Yeah, she's here. No, no Dawn. I found Anita in a heap on the floor, all passed out. There was a lot of blood." She closed her mouth and seemed to listen intently to Zerbrowski.

Anita sighed, and had to swallow hard against a wave of nausea. Was it a good sign with a concussion if you felt like hurling? You'd think she'd remember, what with the numerous times she'd been whacked in the head over the years.

"That's a definite yes," Faith said. "We'll be here." She hung up the phone.

"What's a yes?" Anita asked dully. Her vision seemed to be starting to clear up.

"The question was if you need an ambulance," Faith said as she brushed some hair out of Anita's face. Even the simple touch made Anita's head ache. "By the look of the floor and that board, you should be dead. How come you're not dead? Got some secret Slayer strength in there?"

"I think it's 'cause of the marks," Anita muttered. "I want to lie down."

"No, no lying down for you," Faith argued. "You can lean on me if you want." She slipped an arm around Anita's shoulders. "So, while we wait, you can tell me what you're talking about."

Anita tried to remember why she wasn't supposed to be so close to Faith, but couldn't find the reason. "I'm Jean-Claude's human servant. That makes me harder to kill."

"Damned straight," Faith said. She shifted around until Anita leaned her head on Faith's shoulder. "And a good thing, too. What ever made you come in here alone?"

"You were up on the roof," Anita said softly. "I looked in the window and saw Dawn. I couldn't not come in."

"What about backup?" Faith asked. Her voice was getting softer, too.

"I never have backup," Anita said. She closed her eyes. It was so nice there, just not moving. "I had to do something."

"Just hold on, Anita. Don't fade out of me now," Faith ordered.

"Why not?"

"Come on, I didn't do that whole kissy thing back there in the snow for nothing," Faith said. "And don't forget that vampire of yours. He won't be very happy if you up and die on me."

Vampire. Anita took a deep breath, making herself ignore the pain and the nausea. She couldn't die. "I won't die," she said, and her voice firmed up even as she spoke. "I promise."

"Good," Faith said. The sound of sirens was faint in the distance.

"This day really sucks," Anita said as she opened her eyes. Her vision was double for a moment, then it steadied back to normal.

"No argument from me there."

* * *

"I've told two times, Zerbrowski, I'm not telling you again!"

"Just once more, Anita," Zerbrowski said in a coaxing voice. All that tone was managing to do was piss Anita off.

"Fine," Anita said through clenched teeth. She could barely talk around the pain in her head, but she was angry and that always helped her concentrate. "Dawn's hands and feet were manacled, with chain between the manacles. I got the chain between her hands undone from that hook there," Anita pointed at the hook where it hung from the chain. "Then I tried to get her feet undone."

"And what was holding that chain down?" Smith, the newbie at RPIT, was hovering by Zerbrowski's side, asking annoying questions.

"A regular old bolt, screwed into the concrete." Anita had to pause and breathe deeply. The urge to throw up was back, but she wasn't going to tell anyone that.

"And then you saw... what?"

"Dawn's eyes got really, really big. I didn't have time to turn around or anything when I got hit in the head."

"And you didn't sense this guy coming?" Zerbrowski asked.

"No. Not at all. Which is weird, because I usually sense people sneaking up on me."

"Maybe because it was day?" Kennedy asked. She had wandered over from where Willow was sitting on the ground, chanting.

"Huh? And what's she doing?" Anita asked.

Kennedy smiled slightly, but it seemed forced. "Another locator spell. It's not going to work, but she thought she'd give it a go. You're a necromancer, right?" Kennedy changed topics.

Anita just stared up at the young woman.

"Right. So you can raise magic at night, but not the day, right?" Kennedy prodded.

That wasn't strictly true, but Anita wasn't about to tell the cops that. Down that path lay questions Anita was hoping to never have to answer. "I can't raise a zombie in daylight, no." Strictly speaking, that wasn't a lie. "But I can feel other people, can tell when they're about. I didn't get this guy at all. If it was even a guy."

Kennedy frowned. "Weird."

"I'll say," Zerbrowski said. "You know, Anita, you've been battered around more on this case than on any I've seen recently. You ever think of taking a vacation?"

Anita closed her eyes and wished she had an ice pack. And a whole bucket of aspirin. "Every damned day."

"Damn it!" Willow exclaimed. She stood up and brushed dirt off her jeans. "I can't find a trace! Not of Dawnie, not of anyone who was in this warehouse except for Anita. Nothing!"

Zerbrowski shook his head. "There has to be something we missed," he said. "Richardson here said that she came in after you were knocked to the ground, Anita, and that she didn't see anyone. I don't suppose you have any idea how long you were out?"

"No, I don't." Anita looked around the warehouse. Something was wrong, but what the hell was it? "But the blood under my head, that I touched, was warm. It couldn't have been long."

"How warm?" Willow asked, walking over to where Anita was propped against a concrete pillar.

"Real warm."

"Human blood wouldn't keep warm on a floor of this temperature for longer than half a minute," Kennedy said slowly. She put her hands on her hips. "Start from the top, Anita, from when you saw Dawn through the windows," she ordered.

Anita wanted to stick her tongue out at Kennedy, but that was so juvenile she almost felt bad. Besides, the priority was finding Dawn. That was all.

"At the window, I saw Dawn," Anita recited. She had everyone's attention, even if Faith was scanning the building. "I came in that door over there. I didn't see or sense anyone around, so I came across the floor, staying close to the wall. Still didn't see anyone, and Dawn wasn't moving much."

"But she was breathing," Willow interrupted. "She was alive."

"Yeah," Anita said. "She was breathing. And staring up at the ceiling. When I didn't see anyone, I went over to the circle and kicked a couple of the talismans--"

Oh, shit. That was what was wrong. There was no hint of the talismans or the circle that had held Dawn.

"The talismans are gone, and so's the circle!" Anita exclaimed. She tried to stand up, but Zerbrowski's hands and the pounding in her head kept her down. "Dawn was in a painted circle, and there were talismans all around her. Fuck, why didn't I think of that before?"

"That's what happens when you get whacked up-side the head," Faith said. "There weren't no talismans or anything when I came in here, I'm sure."

"So they took them with Dawn?" Willow asked.

Kennedy was shaking her head. "Doesn't make sense. Yeah, you can pick up talismans and stuff when you grab the girl, but how do you take a painted circle with you?" She stalked over to the large bloodstain and the dangling chain. "You said there was a bolt, in the concrete?"

Anita nodded.

"There's nothing here, it's flat concrete. Guys, I think we're complicating this." Kennedy spread her hands wide. "We were asking where they took Dawn, but what if they never left?"

Willow took a step back, then fell to her knees on the concrete. "Everybody, get back," she demanded. Her voice was so much stronger than anything Anita had heard from her. Power, sheer unadulterated power started rushing off of her.

"What are you going to do?" Zerbrowski demanded as Faith and Kennedy backed up against the walls.

Willow lifted her hands. "I've had enough of this." She threw her head back, and Anita could see that her eyes were black, solid with power, just like a vampire. "Reveal!" Willow screamed.

The world broke apart.

* * *


	18. Chapter 18

* * *

As Isaac continued to chant, the world was stripped away, and Dawn lost sight of Anita. The pressure in the air became too much, and Dawn had to close her eyes.

Abruptly, the chanting stopped. James paced back and forth behind Isaac. "We are out of time," James said roughly. "We need to begin the ritual now."

"We should wait until midnight," Isaac said. He knelt back on his heels. "The chances of it working during the day are lower, and I have not worked this hard to have the whole thing messed up because you get trigger happy."

James shook his head. "Can they find us here?"

"No. Especially not if they're using that vaudun bitch. I worked all the spells just for that."

"It may not even matter," James said. It sounded like he was trying to reassure himself. "She's probably dead."

"With that hit to the head?" Isaac asked. "Did you hear me tell you about what she's gone through? There's vampires up and down the Mississippi River with tales about what kind of damage she can take. It's more likely she'll get up and try to track this one." Isaac nodded his head at Dawn.

"But your magics will stop that?"

Isaac nodded. "Before we came to St. Louis, I made sure that our plans took her into account. She will not be the one to stop us."

James stopped pacing and stared at Dawn, anger in his eyes. "We can't afford to wait," he said. "If there's even a chance they could track us, we need to get moving."

"It's not going to work if she doesn't let Bolverk into her," Isaac pointed out. As he spoke, he began to rearranged the talismans back into a circle around Dawn.

"Oh, she will," James said. He smiled, and the expression transformed his mild face into something vile, ugly.

The shock from almost getting free, then watching Anita getting her head bashed in, was wearing off. Dawn was starting to get very, very angry. She was tired of being talked about like she was a thing, something to be used. She'd had more than enough of that with Glory.

"If she fights Bolverk, she will die horribly," James continued. "Isaac, begin."

Isaac made sure that the talismans were in place, then moved back on the concrete until he was facing Dawn before he began chanting again. Darkness began to swirl around up from the ground, not quite touching Dawn. Not yet.

Dawn pulled at the chain still attached to the floor. The bolt didn't budge. She hissed in frustration and tried again, pulling so hard that the chain began to cut into her palms. Still she pulled, until her hands slipped on the chain, slick with her blood.

Slowly, the darkness grew thicker, stronger. Isaac's chanting became harder to hear, and he and James began to fade from view.

Then, the darkness began to press at her mind, and the sensation was just familiar enough for Dawn to know that it was Bolverk, back again.

Just like last time, Dawn did not know how long it took. Time no longer had any meaning, here in the darkness.

The pressure was unrelenting. It was more, more, until finally Dawn began screaming, just because it loosened some of the pressure.

 _Let me in or die,_ Bolverk whispered into Dawn's mind. Dawn felt the words like dead fingers on her skin.

It was so hard, but Dawn gathered all of her strength, that last spark of hope that she'd been hiding. _I may be alone,_ she thought, _But I'm still strong enough to fight your stupid evil plans._

Bolverk screamed at her, and the sound became like shards of glass. It hurt, oh God did it hurt, but Dawn tried desperately to remember what she was fighting against. What she was fighting for.

 _It's all I ever do,_ she thought, less to Bolverk than to remind herself. _Fight evil. Glory, the First, all my work at school, with Buffy, the Slayers. I'm not going to stop now!_

_Why?_

There, in pain and torment, all of her reasons gone, Dawn gave the only answer she had. _Buffy died so that I wouldn't destroy the world. I'm not going to let her down again._

Dawn knew that Bolverk just did not understand what she meant, and it hesitated.

 _Submit!_ Bolverk screamed, and it sounded like Anya's voice.

 _No!_ Dawn dug deep into her mind and pulled out a memory, from that last year in Sunnydale. It had been in the kitchen one day. She and Anya had been snarking about the Mini-Slayers while making baby chocolate banana bombs, all the sugar anyone ever needed on a stick. It hadn't been much of anything, just another day in the face of impending annihilation.

Just her and Anya, the real Anya. Anya hadn't hated her, hadn't hurt her. She'd helped Willow and Tara and Xander take care of Dawn after Buffy died. She was Dawn's friend.

Anya would never have done to Dawn what Bolverk was doing to Dawn.

With that realization, Bolverk screamed again. The pressure slipped inside Dawn's body and began to tighten around her heart. It was impossible to breathe, to move. Dawn's entire being centred around the hand squeezing in her chest.

 _You can stop this,_ came the final whisper. _Give yourself to me_.

Dawn found that she could still cry, and tears began to slide down her cheeks. She was so scared, but she didn't have any choice.

_No._

The only thing she could do was die.

Suddenly, someone spoke, and it cut through the darkness. Dawn had only a second to see Isaac and James, there on the cold concrete outside her circle, before the world broke apart.

* * *


	19. Chapter 19

* * *

Anita watched in wonderment as the world started to unravel itself. The closest analogy her muddled brain could come up with was that it was like watching an onion unpeel itself, transparent layer upon transparent layer. The air silently shimmered and changed, over and over again.

"What the hell is going on?" Zerbrowski shouted.

"Willow's whipping out the big guns," Kennedy replied. "Let's just say that nothing's going to stand in her way now."

"But how is she doing it?" Zerbrowski demanded.

"It's like brain surgery," Faith interjected. "I know nothing about it, but she does so it's okay." She started undoing the buttons of her jacket, then pulled it off.

Any further conversation stopped when the wind picked up inside the warehouse. To Anita, it felt like the wind that moved around her when she raised zombies, only now it touched everyone, not just her.

Through the shimmering air, Anita could dimly make out the outlines of three people. Dawn was right where Anita had left her, chained to the ground. There was a dark haze around her, and Anita couldn't tell if it was part of the illusion that Willow was stripping away, or something else.

The air paused for a moment, then Willow threw her head back and let out a wordless scream. Almost imperceptible cracks appeared in the air and the world shuddered.

The play of light in the air vanished, and the world was back to normal.

On the ground in front of Dawn and the loathsome black cloud was a young man, in a position almost identical to Willow's. He was chanting in a language that Anita did not know. Behind him stood another man. When the illusion fell, the standing man turned on his heel and ran.

Faith started forward, but Willow held out her hand, stopping the Slayer in her tracks. "That thing has Dawn," Willow said sharply. "He's not creating it. Leave him."

As they all watched, Slayers and cops alike, the cloud started to narrow into thin dark strands, circling Dawn. There was blood spattered over her light-coloured dress. Anita didn't know why, but the sight of that blood, which had not decorated Dawn's skin before, filled her with a cold fury.

"Willow?" Kennedy asked.

"Hold on," Willow replied. Her voice was stressed, as if she was trying desperately to hold on to something. "I can feel it, around Dawn. He's trying to make it kill her!"

"Then we take magic-boy out," Faith said coldly.

Willow gasped and dropped her hands. When she turned her head to look at Anita and the cops, her eyes were still pure obsidian black. "It's too late. It's already inside Dawn. I only have one chance."

"Chance to do what?" Anita asked, dragging herself to her feet.

"To defeat this thing."

Anita looked at Zerbrowski. He shook his head. "What does she mean?"

Anita looked back at Willow, then at Dawn, and she made a choice. "Do what you have to do."

Willow whipped back around. "You two better get ready," she said as she raised her hands.

"Does she mean us?" Faith asked Kennedy.

The other Slayer rushed over to the black case she had been carrying around with her for days. "Of course she means us, stupid," she said as she flipped open the latches.

 _A weapon of some sort?_ Anita thought.

Kennedy yanked the lid open and pulled out a wicked-looking sword. "Want?"

Faith held out her hand. "Sure, but next time I get dibs on the scythe."

Kennedy threw the sword at Faith, who caught it easily. Kennedy then reached back into the case and pulled out what looked like a battle-axe, probably that scythe Faith had wanted.

Even from yards away, Anita could feel the hum of power off the blade of the scythe. Kennedy gave it a twirl, and it moved like it was a part of her body.

Willow took a deep breath and began speaking in what sounded like the same language as the sorcerer on the other side of Dawn. Whatever language they spoke, it was full of harsh sounds that crawled up Anita's skin.

Anita couldn't see the magic, but she could feel it in her bones. Willow and the man were pushing back and forth, with Dawn in the middle of the deadly tug of war. Anita almost screamed as a particularly vicious magical thrust sliced through the air. When she looked up, she saw that Willow was bleeding from a gash across her cheek.

The metaphysical wound only seemed to enrage the witch. Her red hair blowing about her face, Willow started chanting again, but quickly stopped. "Dark Gods, hear me!" she yelled in English. "I call upon Odin! I call upon the gods in Ragnarok, the gods at the end of the world! Give your evil-doer shape, give it form! Bring his evil into the land of men!"

At Anita's side, Zerbrowski swore. "She's making a demon?" he asked.

"Demon's already here, Tex," Faith said. "But a girl can't fight something without a body."

"Bolverk!" Willow screamed, heedless of the turmoil behind her. "Let the girl go! I deny her to you!"

The air trembled. With a roar, the dark strands around Dawn pulled away, dumping the girl to the concrete floor, motionless. The darkness coalesced, swirling around itself, faster and faster.

Until Bolverk, whole, stood in the middle of the warehouse.

Kennedy made a noise in her throat. "And here I was, hoping to avoid getting the crap kicked out of me this week," she said weakly.

"Are those even feet?" Faith asked, her voice no more solid.

Anita wished with all of her might that she was somewhere else. The creature Bolverk stood well over nine feet tall, covered in thick black scales, spikes jutting out of its arms and along its back. Its tail lashed slowly along the floor as it considered the group by the wall.

Then it turned its attention on the sorcerer.

The young man jumped up and tried to run, but he never had a chance. Bolverk was on him in two bounds. The man didn't even had time to scream before Bolverk picked him up and ripped him in two.

The body parts were still twitching when Bolverk dropped them and slowly stepped over them on its way to Dawn.

"Fuck no," Faith muttered. She threw herself at Bolverk, Kennedy just behind her.

Anita hadn't thought about what it meant to be a Slayer. Jean-Claude's words to her the previous night didn't made much of an impression at the time, and Faith had tried to downplay it. But this... this was it.

Faith and Kennedy moved around Bolverk in a nimble high-speed dance, graceful but deadly. No matter how fast Bolverk was, the Slayers ducked out of its way. They kept it busy; when one was at its back, the other was in front. Their weapons were only part of the assault. Anita was sure she saw Faith kick the monster in the chest.

The fight was hypnotic. Anita couldn't think of anything else until they strayed a bit too close to Dawn.

Dawn.

The girl was trying to pull her chains out of the floor, but it wasn't working. It was only luck so far that had kept Dawn out of the line of fire.

Taking a quick peek at Willow, Anita saw that the witch still concentrating on the fight. She wondered what she was doing, until half a second later, Bolverk's fist bounced off thin air. _Must be a shield_.

Anita's world narrowed down to a single fact. _Someone had to get Dawn out of there_. When Kennedy swung the scythe at Bolverk and almost knocked it over, Anita took her chance.

Ignoring Zerbrowski's sudden shout, Anita darted across the concrete floor. She came to a skidding halt next to Dawn.

"Dawn!" Anita yelled to get the girl's attention.

Dawn looked at her with empty eyes. "I saw you get hit," she said faintly.

"Just a scratch," Anita lied. She pried Dawn's bleeding hands off the chain. It was still bolted to the concrete. She gave it an experimental tug. Nothing.

"You should go," Dawn urged. "It's not safe here."

If Anita had the time to sigh, she would have. "Excuse me, who's chained to the floor?" Out of the corner of her eye, Anita caught movement, and she pulled Dawn to the ground and shielded the girl with her body as Bolverk's tail swished through the air above them.

The fight moved back over to the middle of the warehouse, giving Anita a second to think around the thickness in her head. _I haven't got a wrench,_ she thought, _or a bolt-cutter. All I have is a gun._

A gun.

It was a really, really bad idea. But it was all she had. Keeping Dawn pressed to the concrete, Anita pulled her gun out of her shoulder holster and flicked off the safety with her thumb.

"What are you--"

"Shut up," Anita ordered as she aimed. She had to be careful. Shooting at a metal chain like this was just begging for the chain to shatter and turn into high-speed shrapnel. Edward would never let her live it down if she caught a bit of shrapnel over something as stupid as this.

She fired, and the bullet hit concrete, a foot wide of the bolt. Anita took a deep breath and tried to blink away the sudden blurriness in her vision. Carefully, she aimed again, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet cut apart the chain like butter. Anita scrambled to her feet, using her gun-free hand to pull Dawn with her. Somehow, she managed to half-carry, half-pull Dawn with her over to where Willow knelt at the edge of the warehouse.

Dawn collapsed once they reached Willow's side. Anita staggered over to Zerbrowski while Dawn wrapped her arms around Willow's waist and held on for all she was worth.

Zerbrowski caught Anita around the middle and held her against him. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Anita didn't answer. With Dawn safe, all she had left to do was watch the fight.

The balance of the battle had not changed. Bolverk seemed to be evenly matched with Kennedy and Faith. A particularly forceful slash of the claws drove the Slayers back for a moment, a lull in the storm.

Bolverk swayed on its bowed legs and looked around the room with all four of its malevolent eyes. Its gaze lingered on Anita. _Join with me,_ a thought whispered in Anita's head. _Together we can rule this world, a reign of death and decay._

The sensation of power surged in Anita's mind, and she was halfway out of Zerbrowski's arms when she realized what she was doing. The dark seductive power that had a moment before tasted like everything she had ever wanted turned to ash in her mouth.

"No!" she screamed to no one in particular, and buried her face in Zerbrowski's jacket. "No, no, no," she repeated as she built her mental shields up higher and thicker than they had ever been. She could not, would not, ever go down that path.

Bolverk roared in fury, and Kennedy took the opportunity to swing her scythe at its neck. Had she attacked half a second before, it might have worked. Bolverk caught her move and knocked the scythe away. Its other hand swept round and its claws caught Kennedy right in the chest.

The Slayer was flung across the room and landed hard, not moving. Faith let out a primeval scream. She ducked and rolled across the floor, landing next to Kennedy's scythe. Pickering it up, she attacked Bolverk in an inhuman frenzy.

Anita couldn't see all of Faith's movements, she was moving so fast. The beast fought her, but Faith seemed to know where the creature was going to move, what it was going to do. After a powerful blow to its head, Faith swung the scythe up, slamming the blade into its neck.

The blade went right through Bolverk's neck. The scythe hadn't finished its arc before Bolverk's body fell to the ground, unmoving.

As Faith slowly lowered the scythe, black blood dripping off the blade to the ground was the only sound.

* * *


	20. Chapter 20

* * *

Faith twirled the scythe in her hands, blood flying off the blade. "No matter the evil, ain't met nothing as can live without a head," she said under her breath. "Kenn?"

The other Slayer groaned loudly and rolled onto her side. "I'll live," she said, pain lacing her voice. "Keep chopping."

"She's right," Willow said. The witch's eyes were still solid black, but the power around her was changing. Anita wasn't sure if anyone else could feel it, but the magic somehow felt lighter. "It's not life threatening. If we get her to a hospital soon she won't even have a scar."

Kennedy chuckled, even though it must have hurt. "I know you always got me, Will."

Faith hefted the scythe and set about chopping Bolverk into pieces.

"Smith, Evans," Zerbrowski said to his fellow cops, "Go make sure Browne doesn't bleed to death. Now!"

Anita slowly pulled away from Zerbrowski. Now that the rush of adrenaline was gone, her head hurt more than ever. But she didn't have time for that to slow her down. "Dawn?"

The girl looked wretched, as one might expect to happen after being abducted and held by demon-raisers for days. Her long brown hair was a mess, her dress stained with blood and dirt. There were tear-tracks on her face. But Anita hadn't been so happy to see someone in a very long time.

When Dawn's only reaction was to tighten her grip on Willow, the witch stroked Dawn's hair and nudged her shoulder. "Dawnie, you're safe now, I promise." She pushed harder. "And you're still rather strong for a non-Slayer."

Dawn let go quickly and sat up. "Are you okay? I'm sorry--"

The blackness in Willow's eyes bled away until her eyes were green once again. "We've got you now, it's all right," she said soothingly, taking Dawn's face in her hands. "You're safe."

Dawn shook her head, eyes never leaving Willow's face. "No, you don't understand," she said frantically. "Bolverk said it was going to get inside me and use me to hurt people!"

Anita crouched down next to Dawn and Willow. "Bolverk's dead," she said, a shudder running down her spine. "Faith killed it." As if to emphasize the point, across the warehouse the scythe cut into the concrete with a heavy clang. "You don't have to worry about it making you evil."

Dawn stared at Anita for a moment, then reached up to push her hair out of her face. Her hands were halfway up when she froze, staring at the blood on her hands.

"Oh, Dawn," Willow said, carefully pulling on Dawn's wrists until her hands were resting palms-up on Willow's knees. "We'll get the doctors to look at that in the hospital."

Dawn laughed, a strange sound. "Sure there's no extra uses for my blood this time?" she asked bitterly.

Willow shook her head. "You need to calm down, Dawn," she said as she shrugged out of her winter jacket. "I know it's a tall order, and that you've been through a lot, but I need you to hold it together for just a little longer, all right?" She got to her knees and slung the jacket around Dawn's shoulders.

Zerbrowski came over to stand behind Anita. "Ms. Summers, we'll get your statement at the hospital, but where there more than the two in here tonight who were responsible for your abduction?"

"What?" Dawn looked around the warehouse, her eyes lingering on the ripped-up body of the sorcerer. "Is that Isaac?" She started breathing a bit too quick, a bit too shallow. "He's magic, like evil black magic, how do you know he's really dead?"

Over the sound of distant sirens, Anita said, "I know death when I feel it. Bolverk ripped that guy, Isaac, apart and he's dead."

Slowly, Dawn's gaze moved over to Faith, dismembering the creature that had been Bolverk, and then over to where the cops were helping Kennedy. "What about James?"

There was an odd tone in Dawn's voice, but Anita couldn't place it. "Was that the other guy?"

Dawn nodded. "He wasn't magic, I don't think." Slowly, Dawn turned until she was facing Zerbrowski. "Are you the cop? Because I never got his last name, I'm sorry."

Zerbrowski smiled at her, a very calming and gentle smile. "It's no problem," he reassured Dawn. "We have a name and we'll do all we can to bring him in. Don't you worry about his getting anywhere near you."

Dawn let out a long sigh, and crumpled against Willow.

Anita sat back on her heels and put her head into her hands. It was too much, too fast. A little over an hour had passed since she'd found Dawn. So much magic, so much pain.

And death.

Anita pushed those lingering thoughts away as a team of paramedics burst into the building. After looking around, they didn't seem to know who to tend to first.

Thankfully, Zerbrowski took charge. "Over there, monster attack!" he shouted, pointing at Kennedy.

"We thought it was a head injury," the male paramedic retorted.

"And now it's not." Zerbrowski put his hands on his hips, something he only ever did when he was very annoyed. "The victim saved someone's life tonight, so get a move on! Anita, keep an eye on Ms. Summers, will you?" Zerbrowski said, heading over to Kennedy.

Anita thought about frowning, but her head hurt too much for that. She settled on mumbling, "Aye-aye, sir," under her breath.

The paramedics hurried over to Kennedy, giving the blood-spattered Faith a wide berth. "Monster's puppy chow," Faith told Anita. She leaned the scythe across her shoulder, giving Dawn a tired smile. "Hey kid. Looking good."

Dawn blinked up at Faith a few times.

"Look, Red, go see Kenn," Faith continued. "Tell the paramedics her vitals. I'll stay with Dawn."

Willow frowned. "I can't... can I?"

Faith and Dawn exchanged a look, and then Dawn tried to sit up. "Go make sure Kennedy's okay, Willow, I'll be okay. Faith'll keep me safe."

"Are you-- Okay." Willow stood up and rushed across the warehouse.

Faith plopped to the ground and put out her hands to steady Dawn. "She's always the same, trying to make it seem like she doesn't care what Kennedy's up to, but still waiting up for the girl to come back from patrol."

Dawn let Faith touch her arms, but didn't lean on her like she had Willow. "Willow's lost so many people that she can't let the rest of us go, not completely."

Faith put her hand on Dawn's shoulder. "Dawn, you're safe now. Just like we all promised. We look after our own."

Anita raised an eyebrow. She wasn't thinking anything in particular, but Faith saw the expression and misinterpreted it.

"Actually, Anita did help," Faith said, stumbling over her words. "Or, more precisely, she did all of the work and got kicked around the most."

"Faith, you can take your feet out of your mouth any time," Dawn interrupted. "I know what Anita did. She's the one who came back for me."

* * *

The paramedics loaded up a very vocal Kennedy into the ambulance and drove off, sirens blaring.

Once the ambulance was gone, Willow came back into the warehouse and sitting back down beside Dawn. "She'll be fine."

"Good," Dawn said absently. "I'm glad she came. She doesn't even like me."

"Kennedy doesn't like anyone," Faith said.

Willow shivered in the chill air. "That's not true. She just doesn't make a lot of friends, is all."

Unsure of how her question would be received, Anita hesitantly asked, "What did she say to you? As they were putting her in the ambulance?"

Willow pulled her legs to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. "She told me that if anything happened to her, I was supposed to make sure Faith didn't do anything stupid."

"And what would I do?" Faith asked, indignant.

There was a hollow look in Willow's eyes. It was a familiar expression; Anita often saw it in the mirror. But what would the witch have lived through to weigh her down so? "You wouldn't do anything. It was her way of make sure I didn't."

Zerbrowski chose that moment to return. "Another ambulance is on its way for Ms. Summers," he said, adjusting his glasses. "No more are available, Anita, so it looks like you're riding with me."

"I'll go with Dawn," Willow said. "Are we going to the same hospital as Kennedy?"

"Yep, all figured. Smith's going to go with you two in the ambulance." Zerbrowski adjusted his glasses again, his expression changing, getting colder. _Stone cold Zerbrowski_ , Anita thought. If she hadn't been so spacey, she might have giggled. "You're not leaving town anytime soon, are you, Ms. Rosenberg?"

Willow met Zerbrowski's gaze steadily, even as Faith jumped to her feet. "Now you hold on a damn minute!" Faith exclaimed. "She saved Dawn's life and you want to hold her here?"

"No, Faith, he's right," Willow said. "Someone died while I was using magic. There has to be an investigation. It's the way it works now." To Zerbrowski, she said, "I'll leave my number with you, but I'll be at the hospital until Dawn leaves."

"Thank you, Ms. Rosenberg." The cold exterior melted away, and there stood the old joking Zerbrowski. "Anita, how are you doing, really?"

Anita tilted her head back to look up at Zerbrowski, wincing as the late afternoon sun shining through the windows hit her in the eyes. "If you all don't stop asking me that, I'm going to get cranky."

Zerbrowski snorted. "You were born cranky, don't give me that."

"Sergeant!" Smith shouted. "Can you give us a hand?"

As Zerbrowski walked away, Anita noticed that Faith was watching his back. "Stop it," she ordered.

"Can I help it if the man's got a cute butt?"

Anita made a face. "Stop looking at his butt."

"Then can I look at your butt?" Faith asked. "Because it's cute too."

Anita was grateful that she was too tired to blush. "When were you looking at my butt?"

Faith shrugged. "Well, you keep falling over. It's a side effect."

Dawn frowned. "Have you two met before?" she asked.

"No, honey, they've been doing this all morning," Willow said with a sigh.

"Oh." Dawn looked down at her hands. Blood was still gently seeping from the wounds. "I didn't think anyone was going to come," she said finally. Her voice was no louder than a whisper.

Willow leaned over and gently placed the tips of her fingers on Dawn's palms, careful to avoid any wounds. "We will always come for you. We're always there for each other."

"Scoobies to the end," Faith added.

Dawn breathed out shakily, then gripped Willow's hands tightly, mindless of the fresh blood that welled up and dripped thickly to the ground. "I wasn't going to let it win," she said. "I wasn't going to let it hurt anyone. It said it was going to kill me, but I wasn't going to let it hurt anyone, you have to believe me."

Willow pried her hands loose and took hold of Dawn's wrists. "Dawn, I've known you for your whole life," Willow said gravely. "I've seen you grow up surrounded by evil and darkness and always fight against it. I know you would make the right choice, not because you're told to, but because it's what you always do."

Tears started to slide down Dawn's cheeks. "How can you be so certain?" she whispered.

"Hey, witch here?" Willow replied in a slightly joking manner. "I know everything."

Dawn pulled her hands gently out of Willow's grasp. "Tara's hair smelled like lavender, right?"

The slight smile on Willow's face was wiped away, and she grew even paler. "Yeah, it did."

Dawn closed her eyes. "And Anya... Anya didn't hate me?"

"Anya?" Willow repeated, confusion on her face. "No, of course Anya didn't hate you. Why are you asking?"

Eyes still closed, Dawn said, "Bolverk lied to me, I think. I couldn't remember what was right, and what was lies."

* * *

The bored woman at the administration desk of the hospital told Zerbrowski, Anita and Faith that Dawn was already on the third floor in intensive care, and that Kennedy was still in surgery.

"Intensive care?" Anita wondered aloud as the woman went back to her crossword.

"The paramedics said Dawn was suffering from dehydration and some physical injuries," Zerbrowski explained. "Smith called me from the ambulance. The doctors are a bit worried about the dehydration affecting her heart, so they're keeping her under observation for a day or so." He checked his watch. "Look, I'm going to go look in on Dawn and Willow, talk to Smith. Then I'm heading back to the warehouse to consult with CSU. Dolph's taking over the case, now that we've got a body on the ground."

"Is Willow going to get in trouble?" Anita asked, very aware of Faith at her side.

Zerbrowski shrugged. "Can't say at this point. A guy got ripped apart by a demon that she seemed to summon, but it looks like he was also summoning it. It'll be up to the prosecutors office to decide on that one."

Faith shook her head. "Brave new world, my ass," she muttered. "Look, I'm going to give you the name of our contact at the FBI." She rummaged in a jacket pocket. "Have your lieutenant talk to him before you decide on anything with Willow."

Zerbrowski took the card she offered. "Sure thing. You make sure that Blake here gets to a doctor pronto?"

"Yeah."

Zerbrowski turned and headed down the hall. It took Anita a second to realize that she was looking at his butt as he walked. _I've been hanging around Faith too much,_ she thought as she made herself look away.

"Aren't you going to go check on Dawn too?" Anita asked.

Faith readjusted the strap of the scythe's carrying case on her shoulder. "No, she's in good Willow hands. I'm no good with the sympathetic sitting around. Get all antsy, you know?"

"Oh." Anita looked at the woman for a moment. She was still covered in splashes of black blood. She wondered if that was why Faith wore so much black. "What about, you know, that other guy who took Dawn? James? And that woman at the bar?"

Faith met Anita's gaze. There was pain in her eyes, but also something darker, more real. "There's no indication that those two are magical," Faith replied. "Part of the rules in our little outfit is that we don't do humans. That's the job of whatever cops are around."

"And how did that come about?"

Faith squared her shoulders, the expression on her face making it clear that she would rather be anywhere but having this conversation. "When we made our deal with the government, to help fight the dark side, we got them to agree that we wouldn't deal with humans if they left us all the demons."

That sounded a bit weird to Anita. "I'd have thought it would be the other way around. Their idea."

"No." Faith bit her lip. "I don't know how, but Buffy knew that if we started small, you know, slapping around a human who knew something about the big bad, it'd only be the first step. How long before the feds would ask us to take out a human who'd been involved with vamps? Or be all pre-emptive about something?"

"I see what you mean," Anita said.

"Do you?" Faith asked, real anger in her voice. "It doesn't matter to me or Buffy, you know, we've run that gauntlet. But most of our Slayers aren't even nineteen yet. Buffy and I made this decision for them, to not let these little girls be put in a position to be made government-sanctioned murderers."

 _Like me,_ said a little voice in Anita's head. She crossed her arms over her chest. "So you sit here while Dawn's kidnappers run loose."

"Hey, I never said it was easy," Faith said. "But if I go out there now, looking for this son of a bitch, I risk breaking the system for everyone. I've got a bunch of girls, the only reason they're still alive is we've got this system. It may piss me off like nothing else, just standing here, but I cannot do anything else!"

They were starting to get curious looks from the people passing through the hospital lobby. Anita took Faith's elbow and pulled her over to an alcove, out of sight of the main entrance. "If it's any consolation, RPIT are the best there is," she said. "They'll find James."

Faith jerked away from Anita and dropped onto a couch. "I know."

Anita sat down beside Faith, carefully, so as not to make the pounding in her head any worse.

"Why are you sitting down?" Faith asked. "You need to see a doctor."

"I know. I'll go in a minute." Anita undid some of the buttons on her jacket. It was really hot in the hospital. "Can I ask you a question?"

Faith leaned back on the couch. "Yeah, ask away."

"What's the deal with Kennedy and Willow?" Anita asked.

Faith smirked. "That is an excellent question, with a convoluted answer. See, they dated for a while, few years in fact. After we left Sunnydale, Will came with me and Kennedy and a few others to Cleveland. They were okay for a while, but you know how life it. Interests diverge, et cetera, ad nauseum."

"An amicable break-up?" Anita asked. She was sort of surprised at how the news of Willow and Kennedy dating hadn't been a shock or anything. _Spend enough time around bisexual vampires and sadomasochistic lycanthropes and nothing's a shock, I guess,_ she thought.

"Amicable. Yeah, that's the word." Faith's smirk slowly faded. "Willow finished her master's degree and headed to New York to work with Giles. That kind of ended it. Although last month, Willow came for a visit and took Kenn out for dinner. We've got a pool going to see if they get back together, but no winner so far. You want in?"

Anita thought about it, then shook her head.

"Your loss." Faith stretched, then stood up. "Look, I got to call everyone, let them know little sister's safe and sound and demon-free. Want me to take you down to the ER first?"

"No, I can find the way myself," Anita said. "I've been there often enough I can find the place blindfolded."

"Suit yourself, sunshine," Faith said with a wink as she walked away.

Anita knew she should get up and find herself a doctor to look at her head, but it was so nice to sit here in a warm place, with no violence, no screaming.

 _Join with me_ , Bolverk had said. And she had almost gone to it. But the monster hadn't clouded her mind, to entice her so. All it had done was offer her more power.

She didn't want to be evil. But when did using power to protect her people slip over that line into evil?

Anita ran trembling fingers through her hair. There was something wet in her hair, and Anita pulled back her hand to find cold sticky blood coating her fingers.

She stared at her hand. A month before, Jean-Claude had told her that she was supposed to be his fail-safe, in case he went mad with power. _But what if Jean-Claude's not the one who goes mad?_ Anita thought miserably. _Who's going to be powerful enough to stop me?_

She didn't want to think about this, not now. Not ever. The pounding in her head was going away, replaced with thick waves of lethargy that washed over her, pulling her down. She roused herself slightly, remembering that she was supposed to go see a doctor, but even that was too complicated. _Maybe after a little nap,_ Anita told herself.

She let the uncomplicated darkness pull her down into black, blissful nothingness.

* * *


	21. Chapter 21

* * *

After five hours of testing and poking and prodding and more testing, the doctors had finally left Dawn in peace. Well, as much peace as one ever got when stuck in intensive care. She had tubes and needles running into her, little electric monitors stuck to her chest. Since she wasn't heartily sick of the place yet, she figured she probably needed whatever they were doing to her.

 _Here I am again, staring at the ceiling,_ Dawn thought, looking at the white institutional tiles. It was boring, but she didn't feel like doing anything else. She certainly didn't want to think about what had happened in the warehouse. Not yet.

Willow's voice drifted into the room from the hallway where she had gone to speak with the nurse. Her voice was too faint for Dawn to make out the words.

 _Willow and Faith and Kennedy, they all came to find me,_ Dawn told herself. She hadn't yet asked why Buffy wasn't with them. She wasn't really sure that she wanted to know.

Quietly, Willow came back into the room. "Hey, you're still awake?" she asked when she saw Dawn's open eyes.

"Yeah. What time is it?" Dawn asked, turning her head. Okay, lying flat like this was a bit too boring. She located the button on the bed that raised it up, and pressed it experimentally. Dutifully, the bed moved.

"It's about midnight." Willow went back to her chair beside Dawn's bed. "Not tired?"

Dawn shook her head slowly. "I feel all weird still, but not tired. Is that because of the dehydration or the evil?"

"Probably a bit of both. I always get ooky inside when I do a misperception spell." Willow put her elbow on the bed and rested her chin on her hand. Her eyes were very bright as she watched Dawn. "Do you want to talk about it at all?"

Dawn sighed and made the bed move her up more upright. "I don't know."

"We can talk about it whenever you want. Whatever you want," Willow said.

The worried look on Willow's face reminded Dawn that she wasn't the only one affected in all this. "Is Kennedy okay?"

"Yeah, out of surgery and in recovery. I went down to check on her. She's mad she's wounded, glad the demon's dead and you're okay, and wicked annoyed that Faith got the big bad and not her."

"So she's acting normally?"

Willow nodded and almost smiled. "Good old Kennedy."

The room filled with an awkward silence while Dawn stared at Willow. She hadn't seen the witch in months, not since annual "We-killed-the-Hellmouth" party in May. She looked even frailer than she had then, pale and wan and all those other Victorian heroine descriptors in those weird books Dawn snuck out of the library when she was twelve.

"Willow, what's wrong with you?" Dawn finally asked.

Willow sat up in her chair. She readjusted her shirt collar and ran her hand over her head, back to her ponytail. Then she clenched her hands in her lap.

"You know, don't you?" Dawn asked. "You know what it is."

Willow nodded. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a second. "I haven't told anyone, not Giles, not even Kennedy," she whispered.

"So tell me," Dawn urged, sitting up in bed. The lethargy was quickly being replaced with fear for her friend. "Is it magical? A curse or something? Can we track down whatever it is and kick its ass?"

"Dawn," Willow interrupted, reaching out and linking Dawn's fingers in hers, "It's not that simple."

"Then what?"

Willow hesitated. "I'm not supposed to make you upset."

"No kidding! You not telling me is making me upset!"

"I'm sorry." Willow rubbed her thumb against Dawn's knuckles. "Dawn..." she trailed off for a moment, and ducking her head in a way that Dawn knew, that means she was trying to gather the courage to do something. "When I use my magic, it's a bigger drain that it used to be."

"Define bigger drain," Dawn demanded.

Willow looked hard at Dawn, exhaustion on her features. Horror was growing in Dawn's chest. _This isn't new. This isn't new at all_ , she realized.

"When I do any magic these days, it pulls on me more, not just the energy from the earth." Willow sighed. "I've been to a couple of witches I know, healers and stuff. They say it's probably not going to get any better."

"But--" Dawn's mind cast around. "But you saved the world, just a month ago!" She looked at Willow and wondered how much of a drain she was talking about. "How much did that hurt you?"

Willow shook her head. "I... I don't want to--"

"Tell me," Dawn demanded, her voice low and cold.

Willow swallowed. "It was bad. Real bad. It almost killed me."

Dawn could only stare for a minute. No. No way. She couldn't lose another person in her life, not Willow. Willow, who had always been there for her, even during that weird magical addiction thing. Who had helped her stand up to Buffy when Dawn wanted to enter the demonology program in San Francisco. One of her best friends. "Did you know that would happen?"

"I thought... I didn't know. But I did it, so it's okay."

"How can you say that?" Dawn demanded, pulling away from Willow and pushing herself back into the bed as far as she could.

"Just because," Willow said.

There was something else. Dawn could see that from Willow's expression. "What aren't you telling me?"

Willow stood up and walked around the room, avoiding the beeping machines.

Dawn crossed her arms over her chest, pressing the wires from the heart monitor flat. "How hard was it to strip a mass of illusions off the warehouse and pull a demon into this dimension this afternoon?"

Willow turned around to face Dawn. "I chose to do what I did back there," she said. "On the grand scale of things, it wasn't that bad, but even so, I chose to do it. Don't blame yourself."

"God, how can I not?" Dawn burst out. "I get grabbed by these idiots, then Anita gets her head bashed in, Kennedy gets clawed up good, and now I find out that you may get sicker because you helped me?"

Willow crossed the room and reached out to hug Dawn, somehow managing to miss all of the various wires and tubes. "You didn't do any of this, Dawn," Willow whispered in Dawn's ear. "They did this, not you." She rubbed Dawn's back as Dawn started to cry, this time with all the fear and pain she'd been holding in for days.

* * *

After Dawn cried herself out, Willow helped her to lean back onto the bed. "Sorry I got your shirt all snotty," Dawn mumbled as she sniffled.

"It'll wash." Willow went back to sit in the chair. "You going to be okay?"

Dawn nodded, surprised that she meant it. "Yes." She gave Willow a bit of a glare. "And you?"

Willow slumped down until her head rested on the back of the chair. "I'm going to be fine," she said. "Give me enough time and I'll beat this thing. And if I can't... Well, I'll help Buffy find another witch to work with the Slayers."

"Is there anything I can do?" Dawn asked.

Willow smiled softly. "You can not tell anyone until I find a way to solve this."

"Nuh-uh," Dawn replied. "You're not making me an accomplice in this. What happens if the world needs saving next week and Buffy asks you to help?"

Willow didn't answer.

"You'd help, that's what," Dawn continued. "And it might kill you. And that is unacceptable."

"What do you want me to do?" Willow asked, staring up at the ceiling tiles.

"I don't know, tell Buffy and Giles. Maybe they will have ideas."

"Dawn, I can't do that. What if they need my magic?"

"We need you more than we need your magic, Willow." Dawn pulled a tissue from the box by the side of the bed and blew her nose. "I won't tell anyone as long as you tell Buffy and Giles."

"Why them?" Willow's voice was almost hopeless. It was a horrible sound to hear.

"Because they love you, goof." Dawn wished she had an extra pillow so she could throw it at Willow.

"Fine!" Willow exclaimed. "I'll tell them. I'll tell them when I see them." Her eyes flicked around the room. "Can we talk about something else?"

"What?" Dawn asked warily.

"You tell me all you know about Anita Blake."

"Anita?" Dawn was a bit puzzled. "What do you want to know?"

"All of it," Willow said. "You cannot believe how hard it is to dig up information on her, no pun intended." Willow had the good grace to look a bit uncomfortable under Dawn's scrutiny. "And it would look really good on my thesis for more information on the premiere necromancer in North America."

Dawn sighed. She was getting thirsty, but the doctors had told her no liquid by mouth so they could monitor her fluid intake. Sadistic bastards. "I don't know that much, just so you know," she said.

Willow bounced up in the chair, all signs of tiredness chased away. "Doesn't matter. Come on, spill."

* * *

Half an hour later, Faith knocked on the open doorway to Dawn's room, interrupting the gabfest. Dawn still wasn't feeling tired, which was starting to bother her.

"Hey Faith, any news on the kidnappers?" Willow asked.

Faith just shook her head. She was uncharacteristically somber. "Hey, Dawnie, I called Giles and everyone about you. Rona said hey. And I also called your aunt. They'll come visit you tomorrow."

"What's wrong, Faith?" Dawn asked softly. "Is it Buffy? Is she okay?"

Faith blinked. "Yeah, I guess so. I left a message on her phone."

"So what's wrong?"

Faith came into the room and leaned against the table at the end of the bed. "It's Anita. She... Just after we got here, I left her to go find a phone, you know? But I forgot to ask her something about her cop friend, so I went back." Faith crossed her arms over her chest. _She's badly shaken,_ Dawn realized. "She'd collapsed. So I called for help, right? I mean, what do I know about anything?"

Willow slipped up off the bed. "What was it?" she asked.

Faith exhaled slowly. "Doctors think that the blow to her head put a lot of pressure on her brain."

"She's not-- Is she dead?" Dawn asked, horrified. It was sort of the way her Mom had died, but not, but how could it not be?

"No. No, she's not dead. The doctors got to her in time. They did doctor stuff and they're almost sure she'll live."

"Almost sure." Dawn felt those buckets of guilt Willow had recently talked down, come right back up. This was all her fault, all these damaged people, her fault.

"You didn't do this, Dawn," Faith said, and Dawn realized she had been muttering under her breath. "If anyone's to blame for Anita almost dying, it's me." She shrugged the scythe's carrying case of her shoulder and dumped it on the table at the foot of the bed. "I should have been with her when she went into the warehouse so she wouldn't have been hit. And I told Zerbrowski I was going to take her to emergency, but I just left her sitting there!"

Willow went over to Faith and laid a hand tentatively on her shoulder. "You didn't know this was going to happen," Willow said awkwardly.

"Does it matter?" Faith asked. Dawn could almost taste the bitterness in her voice. "She's still lying flat on her back and not in a good way."

"You did everything you could, right?"

"Is that ever enough?" Faith tossed her hair over her shoulder and glared at Willow.

"No." Willow took her hand away, but didn't back down. "But I saw something today that I forgot you had."

Faith glared harder. Dawn had seen demons run screaming from that look alone. "The ability to fuck things up royally until people are dead on the ground?"

"Bravery. Courage." Willow sat back on the bed and put her arm around Dawn's shoulders. Dawn snuggled against the witch, keeping her eyes on Faith. The Slayer was almost vibrating with unexpressed anger. "I've watched you do everything you could to help find Dawn, even if it meant letting Anita take charge."

"What about what you said earlier? About Buffy not trusting me to find Dawn?" Faith asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Yeah." Willow ducked her head.

 _What's she talking about?_ Dawn wondered. She looked up at Willow.

"I said that because, well, I was angry," Willow mumbled. "But you have to understand that I'm not the one who matters here. I'm not the one who knew you could find Dawnie. You know who did?"

"Buffy," Dawn breathed, sitting up.

For there, standing silently in the doorway to her hospital room, was her sister.

* * *

Dawn wasn't sure what to do. She had a horrible moment where she expected her mother to walk up behind Buffy and take her head off. But no, that had been a nightmare, while this was real and so was Buffy, all whole and stuff. Even if she was extra quiet.

"West Virginia demon-free?" Willow asked, breaking the silence.

Buffy nodded, never taking her eyes off Dawn. "I killed it." She took a careful step into the room, and Dawn knew from the way she was carrying herself that she was injured and trying not to show it.

"Yeah, well, I'll go give Kennedy a poke and see how Anita's holding up," Faith said, awkward once again. She went to duck around Buffy and out the door, but Buffy caught her arm.

"You saved Dawn," Buffy said. There was some serious weight in the look passing between Faith and Buffy, that Dawn wasn't too sure of.

Faith shrugged. Her jaw was clenched so tight that Dawn could see the tension in her muscles from across the bed. It looked like Faith expected Buffy to slug her. "I said I would."

"I knew you could do it," Buffy said. "Thank you."

Faith shrugged again and her shoulders stayed a bit hunched. "God, you don't need to thank me for this." Her voice was ragged, as if she wanted to cry but wouldn't let herself. "After what Dawn's been through? Some of it at my hand? All she's done to save the world and everyone we love? How could I not do everything I could to get her safe?"

Throughout Faith's outburst, Buffy had been staring at her sister Slayer. When Faith stopped to take a breath, Buffy let go of her and put her hands on Faith's shoulders. "That's why I asked you to come when I couldn't," she whispered.

That stopped Faith in her tracks. She stepped back, and Buffy let her hands fall to her side. There was another moment of long silence, and Dawn was almost afraid to breathe, for fear of interrupting whatever was going on.

And then Faith crossed her arms over her chest, and the spell was broken. "I'm going to go check on Anita, anyway," Faith said. "It's good to see you, Buffy."

Buffy turned to watch Faith as the dark Slayer walked out of the room. She paused, her back to Dawn.

"Buffy?" Willow said, when Buffy didn't turn back around.

There was a sniffling sound. "Are you crying?" Dawn asked, confused.

Buffy shook her head without turning around. "Not really."

"Are you okay?" Willow asked.

"Not really," Buffy turned around slowly. Her eyes were a bit red, but there was no outward sign of tears. She smiled weakly as her sister. "Hey Dawn."

Dawn tried to smile back, but all of the fear she felt earlier in the warehouse, when she was convinced no one was coming to save her and she'd die alone, came back. "How was West Virginia?" she asked, so she didn't have to ask why Buffy hadn't been there for her.

Buffy's hand drifted up to her ribs. "I killed the evil," she said as she walked slowly around the bed.

When no further details were forthcoming, Dawn asked, "How many victims did it end up getting?"

Buffy sat on the bed, facing Willow and Dawn. "Five more kids by the time I got there." She closed her eyes briefly and rubbed her hand across her face. "I tracked it for days. Finally cornered it in a daycare, of all places."

"A daycare?" The horror in Willow's voice was plain. Her hand tightened on Dawn's shoulder. "Were there kids there?"

Buffy nodded. "Mid-morning, over twenty kids. They were just babies." She picked at the blanket. "I killed it before it touched any of those kids."

Dawn let out a shaky breath. Suddenly, it didn't matter that Buffy hadn't been there in Saint Louis. "So you saved twenty little lives?"

"Yeah." Buffy wouldn't meet Dawn's eyes. "I knew that I was going to be the only one to stop it, so I sent Faith here instead of me."

Dawn sat up, awkwardly because she couldn't use her injured palms, and put her fingers on Buffy's knee. "You did the right thing."

"Then why does it feel like I let you down?" Buffy whispered.

Dawn lifted her hand and touched Buffy's chin. "You didn't let me down. You made a decision to save a whole bunch of lives."

Buffy pulled back, eyes blazing. "But you're my sister!" she exclaimed. "I'm supposed to protect you!"

"Buffy, I'm a grown-up!" Dawn shook her head. "I'm not little Key Dawn anymore, needing to be saved from Glory. I've been fighting with you for years. There are times when you have to make choices, have to decide. Not what's more important, but where you can make the biggest difference." Dawn put her hand back on Buffy's knee, and Buffy didn't move. "I know that you'd have been there for me if you'd have been able. I know you'd never leave me alone."

Buffy rubbed her hand up Dawn's arm, carefully avoiding the bandages on Dawn's hand and the bruises on her wrist. "How'd you get so smart?"

Dawn smiled, a real smile. "I have a very smart old sister."

"Older," Buffy corrected. "You mean older sister."

"Right." Dawn reached out, and Buffy carefully hugged her, not holding too tight. Unsure where Buffy was injured, Dawn was just as careful as she could be when she returned the hug.

After a while, Buffy sat back. She traced a finger in the air over Dawn's lip. "Did they do that to you?" she asked.

Dawn licked her lip. The split in her lip from where James had punched her had scabbed over, but was still tender. "Yeah, one of them did."

"Do you want to talk about..." Buffy's voice trailed off, and Dawn saw Willow shaking her head frantically.

"I don't know," Dawn said. "I told the cops all that I knew, but..." Looking at her sister, suddenly Dawn wanted to talk about it, about everything. And just as suddenly, rage filled her. "They took Anya away from me."

"Huh?" Buffy leaned forward. "How?"

Dawn balled her hands up, mindless of the pain. "Bolverk took her form, in my head. It made her wrong and told me that it was going to hurt me and kill me, but it was Anya." Dawn looked at Buffy, willing her to understand. "It took Anya away from me and she's dead and can't take it back."

Buffy frowned, and there were the stirrings of anger in her eyes. "Dawn, that wasn't Anya."

"I know!" Dawn leaned back onto the bed, cuddled against Willow. "Maybe in time I'll forget, but right now all I can think about is how jealous I was of Anya because of Xander and how I stole all that stuff from the magic shop. It's all I have right now. Is it ever going to go away?"

"In a bit," Willow murmured. "Eventually all the bad times fade away and you can remember the good times."

"Promise?" Dawn asked. She couldn't keep the pleading tone out of her voice.

Willow kissed Dawn's hair. "I promise."

"Me too," Buffy said. "Me too."

* * *

"And that's what happened," Dawn finally finished. She was starting to get sleepy, finally. "And then they brought me here."

"I can't believe you got kidnapped again," Buffy said. "I mean, you're up into double digits now."

Willow giggled, and it turned into a yawn.

"It's late," Buffy said, checking her watch. "Maybe I should let you two get some sleep, come back tomorrow?"

"Aren't you tired?" Dawn asked, yawning as well. "Have you even gotten any sleep?"

"On the plane," Buffy said. "I'll go find me a nice hotel, crash for a few hours, and be back in the morning to get you out of here."

"Buffy." Willow sat up straight. "You can't go after James and that other bitch. No way."

Dawn looked at Willow, then back at Buffy. _She'd never go after a human... right?_ Dawn wondered.

Buffy stood up and tugged on her jacket. "I'm not going after the people who did this, Will." She took a deep breath. "I'm not going cross that line, not with Eric over at the Pentagon watching us so closely."

"Eric?" Dawn repeated. She had been out of the Scooby loop for a while, but what was Buffy talking about?

"Eric's the moron the Pentagon has watching the Slayers these days," Willow explained. "Watching to make sure they don't break the rules."

"The no-human rule?"

"That's the one." Buffy smoothed Dawn's hair back, the way she sometimes did. "Dawn, I'm not going to risk all the girls, even if--"

"No!" Dawn interrupted. "No, I'm with Willow. No going after the humans, no way!"

"Then we're all agreed." Buffy shrugged as she edged toward the door. "Will, can you watch the scythe?"

"Sure thing, Buffy."

Buffy gave a final wave before she ducked out the door.

Dawn frowned slightly. "Why's she so jumpy?"

Willow got up and moved the scythe's case around to the other side of the bed. "Maybe because she wasn't here? Maybe the slayage in the Mountain State?"

"Maybe the slayage," Dawn mused. "Buffy hates seeing dead kids."

"Maybe." Willow pulled an unused blanket off the end of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. "But from what Giles said, she's been kinda twitchy for a couple of months."

"Maybe she's pregnant," Dawn said flippantly. Then she realized what had just come out of her mouth. "Oh god, she's not, is she?"

Willow shook her head. "Word around is that she hasn't been involved with anyone in a couple of years."

Dawn let out a sigh. "Because that would have been scary." She pushed the button on the bed to lower it.

"Your mind is a strange place, Dawn," Willow said as she settled into her chair.

"Are you going to be okay there?"

"Yup. Comfy as a bed." Willow pulled her legs up. "Unless you want me to leave?"

"No," Dawn said quickly. A bit too quickly. "I... no?"

Willow smiled sleepily. "I'll stay and no one's going to be able to get you anymore, I promise."

And Dawn believed her. "Thanks."

Dawn closed her eyes, wondering if she'd be able to get any sleep before the nurses came in to change her IV bag. She thought about Buffy's weirdness. She thought about her cousin and her aunt and everyone. She thought about Faith and how she guessed she trusted her. Just as she thought that she had better get up as sleep wasn't going to work, she drifted off, with one last worry as to how Anita was doing.

* * *


	22. Chapter 22

* * *

All Anita knew was that she was drifting, in darkness.

Later, she realized that she could hear a steady beeping. It was masking low voices. She couldn't make out who it was talking, but they seemed familiar. Safe.

It was safe, to drift in the darkness. But part of her was curious, and that part wanted to know who was talking. Gradually, Anita could make out the voices.

"...often survive this much damage?" one of the voices said.

There was a sound, cloth moving over wood. "Not often, not like this. Without medical intervention... Fifty years ago, she would have been dead."

There was sorrow in that voice, and Anita wanted to soothe it all away. No one should be that sad.

"Here's to modern medicine," the first voice said. "She's not so weak any more, I can feel it."

"Oui, she is improving. Her strength returns."

As Anita drew closer to the voices, the pain returned. Her head hurt so much. Still, she tried to fight off the pain as she opened her eyes.

When she saw who was in the room, she wondered how she could ever have not known the voices. Jean-Claude was slumped in a chair at the side of the hospital bed, while Richard sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. They hadn't noticed her open her eyes, and she took the moment to look at them.

Richard was wearing the same shirt and jeans he had been wearing earlier that morning, when she'd metaphysically interrupted his marking of papers. Jean-Claude had changed, but then he'd been in his coffin since she'd last seen him. His hair was slightly disheveled. Anita frowned. His hair was never disheveled.

Anita tried to remember what had been going on. The day came back to her in snippets. Waking to find Faith and Jean-Claude fighting. The problem with Stephen and Gregory. The ardeur rising with Faith. Getting whaled in the head by a two-by-four. Then the whole demon thing and the fight.

Dimly, she wondered if Dawn was okay. She hoped so. She couldn't make herself care much.

She sighed. At the faint noise, both Richard and Jean-Claude turned around. Richard's face lit up with a big grin when he saw her awake. "Hey, there," he said softly. "Look who's back."

Anita wanted to say something, but her throat was dry and her head felt fuzzy, under the pain, so she settled on blinking at him.

He moved up on the bed so that he was sitting right beside her. "You gave us quite a scare."

"Scare?" she said roughly.

Richard touched her cheek, looking at her in such way that her heart ached. She has wanted him to look at her like that for so long, and now she had him back again. So why didn't she believe it was real?

"You've been out for a good five hours," he said. "How are you feeling?"

Anita had to think about that, for what seemed like a long time. "I don't feel like throwing up any more. My head doesn't hurt as much."

"See?" Richard said. "Soon you'll be good as new." He glanced over his shoulder at Jean-Claude, who hadn't moved. "Anything I can do for you?" he asked Anita.

"Can you go see if Dawn and Kennedy are okay?"

Richard bent over and kissed her gently on the forehead. "One check on Dawn and Kennedy, coming right up." He stood up. "I'll be back in a bit."

After the werewolf left the room, silence returned. The continual beeping of the heart monitor was getting on Anita's nerves.

She didn't like how Jean-Claude was just looking at her, either. His attention never wavered. He just stared. Knowing him, he'd just stare until she got fed up with it. And with that thought came the others Anita had been trying to hold back, hadn't wanted to think about.

She broke eye contact with him and rolled her head to the side, looking in the direction of the window. The blinds were drawn back on the night, and Anita could faintly see the reflection of the lights in the distance.

"Ma petite--"

"Don't," Anita interrupted. "Just don't, okay?"

"Don't what?"

Anita swallowed hard. She felt a cough tickling in the back of her throat. "Don't tell me how much I fucked up. I don't think I could handle it right now."

"What makes you think I would tell you such a thing?" Jean-Claude asked, his voice very carefully neutral.

"Why wouldn't you?" she asked, her voice empty. "I know I did." She closed her eyes.

The bed moved, and Anita opened her eyes to find Jean-Claude sitting right next to her, where Richard had been minutes before. "Anita, do you need me to fetch you a doctor?"

"No." Anita tried to swallow again. She spotted what looked like a pitcher of water on the bedside table. Ignoring Jean-Claude, she sat up slowly. The pain in her head started throbbing, but she could ignore that too. Once she was sitting up, she swung her legs around the side of the bed, away from Jean-Claude.

He must have spotted her intention, because he stood up and rounded the bed. His fingers touched the pitcher at the same time as Anita's, and she pushed him away.

"Let me help you," Jean-Claude said.

"I can get my own damn water," Anita replied, ignoring how shaky her voice sounded. She managed to fill the little cup halfway, but as she lifted it to her lips, she fumbled and dropped it. The cold water soaked through the front of her thin hospital gown.

Jean-Claude picked up the cup and refilled it. He held it to Anita's lips, and this time she let him help her. When she was done, he placed the cup back on the table and helped her lie back down on the bed. He fussed with the blanket, folding it over her lap and smoothing the edges back.

Anita let him do whatever he was doing. It was easier than fighting. She was so sick and tired of fighting. But all she had done for so many years was fight him. When had that changed?

Jean-Claude sat back down on the edge of the bed. "Anita--"

"How is everyone?" Anita asked, cutting him off. She stared down at the blanket, her fingers moving restlessly.

There was a long silence. "Damian is fine, and feeding for you at Danse Macabe as we speak," Jean-Claude said cautiously.

"Wait, why are you bringing up Damian? If he's fine-- Oh God, Nathaniel?" Anita sat up and pushed back the covers, frantic. Her thoughts were muddled, but she knew she had to get to Nathaniel.

Jean-Claude caught her arms and tried to hold her. "Anita, you must calm down, you're going to--"

"Let go! I have to go home, let me go!"

As strong as Anita was, she was no match for a vampire. Jean-Claude's grip was like iron on her arms, keeping her from jumping off the bed. As she struggled against him, Anita tried to reach out mentally to Nathaniel. Jean-Claude took advantage of the opening of her mental shields, and flashed a series of images in her mind.

Nathaniel at the Circus, worried about Anita. Nathaniel falling over when she collapsed in the hospital. Dr. Lillian bending over Nathaniel, saying he would be all right. The other wereleopards and a couple of the werewolves all lying in a heap with Nathaniel, keeping him warm.

As the images penetrated the fog in her head, Anita stopped struggling. She stared up at Jean-Claude, breathing heavily. "I did that?" she asked in a tiny voice. "I almost killed Nathaniel?"

Jean-Claude let go of her arms and half-lifted her back into the middle of the bed. "You did not kill Nathaniel, ma petite," he said softly as he untangled the heart monitor cord from the IV tube. "Your leopard will be all right, all he needs is rest and warmth."

"How?" Anita asked. _I could have lost Nathaniel forever,_ she thought. Just the thought of not having Nathaniel in her life every day felt like dying.

Jean-Claude sat on the side of the bed again and smoothed the hair off of her face, careful not to touch the injured side of her head. "It appears as if your body reached out to its servant when it was injured."

"But... Damian?"

Jean-Claude ran his fingers lightly over Anita's cheek, and down her neck to rest on her collarbone, stroking the scars. "I believe it is because of the nature of your injury, ma petite. You did not need energy for the ardeur, for which you have called upon Damian in the past. Your flesh and your blood were damaged, and Damian does not hold such life within him."

"So I almost killed Nathaniel instead."

Anita didn't know what Jean-Claude would say. She certainly did not expect him to say what he did. "Yes."

Even through he was only echoing her words, it hurt. She turned onto her side, away from him, and pulled her legs up to her chest.

Jean-Claude rested his hand on her shoulder. He was warm through the thin scratchy fabric of the hospital gown with someone else's blood. "Anita, I know you do not want to hear of the consequences of your actions, but time will not make this any better."

She didn't want to hear any of it. She didn't want any of it. Not knowing that Nathaniel could die because of her, or that if she died, Jean-Claude and Richard and Damian and Nathaniel might all have died too, or that if she died, no one was going to be able to take care of the wolves and she'd be leaving Micah all alone and she'd never get to make up with Ronnie or see Larry's baby or piss Bert off again or yell at Zerbrowski.

A strange noise escaped her throat. It wasn't quite crying, or screaming or anything she knew.

Jean-Claude bent over her and wrapped her into a hug. He murmured things to her in French, nothing she understood, but it was noise that wasn't in her head and it made her not so alone.

Finally, the pain and the fear less than it was, Anita reached up and took hold of Jean-Claude's hand.

"Why am I so scared of dying?" she whispered. "I didn't use to be so scared of dying."

Jean-Claude kissed her softly on the cheek, his lips tickling her skin. "Perhaps it should worry you less why you now fear death, than why you used to be so unafraid."

Anita sniffled. "I'm not scared of death. I think I'm scared of not living."

Jean-Claude sighed, and his sorrow swept over Anita's skin like rain. "That makes two of us, ma petite."

"You said... you said you needed to tell me something?" Anita said hesitantly.

Jean-Claude pulled his hand out of hers, and got off the bed. The loss of contact was jarring, and Anita wasn't sure what to do. She wanted, more than anything, to ask him to stay, but maybe he didn't want to?

Her increasingly manic line of thought stopped when Jean-Claude pulled the chair around the bed to that he could sit where she could see him. "Are you sure you do not wish me to fetch the doctors?" he asked.

Anita didn't really want to reply out loud, but the only other option was shaking her aching head. "No."

"As you wish." Instead of talking, Jean-Claude placed his hand on her arm. He touched the IV tube with a slender finger.

"Why are you guys here?" Anita asked before he could speak. "You, I get, but why Richard?"

Jean-Claude looked tired, quite a feat for a vampire. "Ma petite, you need to realize that you were badly injured. The doctors were minutes away from operating on you to relieve the pressure in your head when Richard and I arrived. As it was, they needed to give you several drugs to help thin your blood and lessen the clotting."

It took her a minute to realize what he was talking about. "The fourth mark," she breathed. "You gave me the fourth mark? But I don't feel any different."

"No, ma petite, you misunderstand me," Jean-Claude said hastily. He lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles. Anita wondered if he was touching her to reassure her, or himself. "We did not give you the fourth mark. We were here in case we needed to, in case you began to slip away from us."

"Oh." Anita wasn't sure how to feel about that, and that alone worried her. "But you would have done it? To save me and everyone, right?"

"Oui."

Anita couldn't look away from Jean-Claude's midnight blue eyes. At some point, she'd fallen in love with him, with his manipulating and his power plays and his silent fears and his gentle hands. She didn't understand love, not really, but after all this time, she was trying not to fight it so hard.

"I have told you that I would not force the fourth mark on you, ma petite, even if it means we gained more power. I do not want you to spend an eternity with me as an unwilling participant."

"You and me both," Anita tried to joke.

"But I would do anything to prevent myself from losing you," Jean-Claude continued.

Anita saw pain in his eyes, and it scared her.

"As we stand, ma petite, with only the third mark, I may survive your death. But I cannot imagine wanting to exist in a world where I do not have you."

She stared at him. Jean-Claude sat very still, careful not to disturb her.

After a while, Anita held her hand out to him. She could almost taste his relief as he entwined their fingers. She pulled his hand so she could rest her head against it.

She'd done all she could to hold off on taking the fourth mark with Jean-Claude, that would bind her even tighter to him forever. But she'd almost died. She'd almost killed four people, three of whom she loved deeper than she wanted to admit. Were their lives worth her being bound to Jean-Claude forever?

She didn't know what to think anymore.

* * *


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Faith POV because Faith.

* * *

Faith swung her arms loosely at her sides as she walked down the corridor. It was quiet, hushed, in the intensive care ward. All visitors gone home, leaving the sick and the wounded to recover, retreat, lick their wounds while hooked up to machines and tubes and monitors.

She shook her head. All this time in hospitals was making her twitchy. She'd always hated hospitals. Buffy and Willow thought it came from her year-long coma back in Sunny Hell. But that had just been the icing on the cake. It came from all those times of seeing people she loved in hospitals, in pain and there being nothing she could do. Her grammy, dying of lung cancer when Faith was too young to know that death was. Her mom, beaten and bruised after yet another boyfriend got pissed. Her friend Sarah, lying voiceless after some fucked-up drunk jock from the high school decided that she looked good enough to hold down and rape.

If her Watcher hadn't found her, Faith knew she wouldn't have made it out alive. She'd have gone down that same old road as her mom, into booze and drugs and getting laid just to forget how much it all hurt.

Fuck. _Getting soft in your old age,_ Faith told herself. She had a task, to find Anita's room, make sure she was going to be okay. A sleepy-as-hell Kennedy had already kicked Faith out, but only after making her promise to keep an eye on Willow. Faith smiled at that. Not look after Dawn, not after Kenn learned Buffy was in town. No, just look after Willow.

 _Those two, they're like an old divorced couple,_ Faith thought. _Even if they're no longer together, they want to make sure the other's okay. Who do they think they're fooling?_

The contemplation of the on-again, off-again nature of the relationship between Kennedy and Willow put a smile on Faith's face. Grinning softly, she padded along the quiet hospital corridor.

As she turned a corner, she noticed someone up ahead, headed her way. Not hospital staff, from the look of his clothes. Faith took a closer look at him. He looked totally built under those clothes. And sweet Jesus, he had a face to match, all angles and softness and sweet touchable skin.

Faith made herself look away before he saw her staring at him. This wasn't the place for her to be making a fool of herself over some guy. She was tired and hungry and had bruises all over her body. All she wanted was a guy like that to hold her in the dark and tell her the fight was over and that she was beautiful to him.

Robin had been like that. But they couldn't make it work. It was the only thing she got sad about these days, that she hadn't been smart enough for him and he hadn't been patient enough with her.

As Faith neared the guy, she saw him falter. In the hush of the hospital, she could hear him take in a breath to speak. _If he tries to pick me up, I may have to punch him._

"Faith?"

Faith's head snapped up and she stepped back, every nerve on alert. "How do you know my name?" she asked warily. As far as she knew, she'd never seen the guy before.

He smiled reassuringly at her, perfect lips pulling back over nice even teeth. His chocolate-brown eyes were tired. "How's Dawn doing?"

Faith moved into a fighting stance without even noticing. Hands at her sides, feet apart, ready for violence. "How do you know about Dawn?" she growled.

The guy took a step back, putting his hands up. "Anita sent me to find out how Dawn and Kennedy were doing," he said.

"So she's going to be okay?" Faith demanded. A weight she hadn't known was there lifted off her shoulders. "She's really going to be okay?"

The guy nodded. "You found her so quickly that the doctors just needed to give her some anti-coagulants and stuff. No surgery necessary." He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I don't know if anyone's said this yet, but thank you for saving her life."

Faith shook her head. She remembered Sergeant Zerbrowski's demand that she take Anita to the emergency room. Something she hadn't done. "It was my fault she was like that."

The guy frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked cautiously. "You didn't hit her. You didn't do any of this. Hell, you saved her life earlier with the ardeur."

Faith had been about to say that he didn't know what he was talking about, that it had been her fault she hadn't dragged Anita to the ER, when the second part of his statement sunk in. "How the hell did you know about that?" she demanded.

The guy's eyes got big. "I, um..."

When no further explanation seemed forthcoming, Faith narrowed her eyes. "Did Anita tell you?"

She didn't know why, but the thought that Anita had gone telling this stranger about the incident from earlier that day made her feel bad inside. Yeah, it had been an emergency, and she'd told Willow about it no problem, but this was different.

"Anita didn't tell me, exactly," the guy said slowly.

"Then what?"

"I... look, can I buy you a cup of coffee or something?" he asked. "The cafeteria's open all night."

Faith pressed her lips together, her stomach rumbling. She hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning with Anita. "How do you know it's open?" she asked.

"I'm here a lot at night," the guy said.

At night? "You're not a vampire," Faith stated.

Of all the reactions, she didn't expect a grin. "Nope, not in the least." The grin slowly slid off his face. Faith was sad to see it go. No matter how handsome he was normally, the brilliant smile on his face made him absolutely breathtaking. "So how about that cup of coffee?"

"You don't need to run back to Anita and tell her Dawn's okay?"

The guy shook his head. "She wasn't actually all that worried. I think it was just a way to get me out of the room."

"You left her alone?"

"Huh? Oh, no. She's with Jean-Claude. He needed to talk to her. And it was better that I wasn't there." He paused and stared at Faith. His gaze was almost too close, too real. "You know who Jean-Claude is, right?"

"Yeah," Faith said softly. "I know who Jean-Claude is."

* * *

Faith stared down at the remains of her sandwiches. Plural. The cafeteria only sold pre-packed sandwiches and limp salads at this time of night, apparently. She'd eaten three sandwiches without even noticing what was in them.

On the other side of the small table, the guy stared at her from behind his cup of tea. Richard, he'd introduced himself.

There had been another Richard be nice to her, once. Faith nudged the crust of the sandwich front of her. _Just another user_. But even after all he did, after she'd climbed out of the hole he'd helped her dig, she couldn't make herself hate him. _Which just shows how fucked up I can be._

"Was the fight bad?"

Faith looked up. "Huh?"

"The fight, at the warehouse," Richard clarified. "Where Anita got hurt? Where you found Dawn?"

"Oh. No, not really. Once we had an ass to kick, things went according to plan." Faith threw her napkin on her plate and picked up her soda.

"Your friend was in surgery and you're looking pretty beat yourself," Richard said cautiously. "Is that the plan?"

Faith glared at him. "Pretty much, yeah."

She waited for him to take up the part of the big male protector, thinking that the womenfolk needed to hide at the back of the wagon, but he surprised her. He sat back in his chair. "Must be hard, walking into a situation where injury or death may be the outcome."

"You get used to it, after a while," Faith replied. She didn't know what to make of him. "So you're a friend of Anita's?"

He smiled ruefully at her. "Sometimes."

"And the others?"

He shrugged. Faith refused to let herself be distracted by the way the cloth of his shirt moved over his chest when he did that. "Anita and I have a complicated relationship."

"Like restraining order complicated?"

"No." He took another sip of tea. How anyone could stand to drink cheap tea from a Styrofoam cup was beyond Faith. "We used to be engaged. Then we stopped."

"And now?"

"And now... friends, I guess. Even I don't understand it half the time."

"You'd have to be friends, I guess, for her to tell you about what happened this morning," Faith said.

She almost missed the expression that passed over his face.

"What?"

He swallowed and tried to smile at her. It came off as rather shaky. "She didn't exactly tell me, as such."

Faith frowned. Then she thought about what he'd just said, and frowned harder. "Then how the hell do you know what happened?"

He licked his lips, and it was almost enough to distract her. Almost. "Anita and I have a sort of... connection, I guess you could call it."

"So?"

Richard put his tea down and sat up a bit straighter. "Anita mentioned that she's not into girls much?"

"Uh huh. But you'd never be able to tell from the way she kissed me," Faith said. The lateness of the hour and the strangeness of the day, together, had tinged Faith's memory of the event with a heavy dash of the surreal. Anita kissing her, Anita pulling away, Faith kissing Anita. Then the weird power thingy that felt like a hour of good sex packed into a few second. All of it, very strange.

Richard leaned forward over the table and looked at Faith with puppy-dog eyes. She wanted to believe whatever web he was about to spin, and because of that she made herself be on alert. She'd been dicked around enough in her life.

"This connection between me and Anita, she activated it this morning," he explained. "When she knew you were the only one she could feed off, and she couldn't do it alone."

"And what did you do?" Faith asked. She didn't get where this was going.

Hesitantly, he said, "I sort of had to help her kiss you." A lot of guys would have been all leery or sly if they had told her something like that. But Richard looked bashful.

Faith couldn't help it. She started laughing.

"Don't mean to bruise your ego, Rickey," she said gasping, when she stopped laughing so hard. "But God damn, I was kissing the both of you?"

Richard nodded. Thankfully, he didn't look put out by her reaction. If anything, he looked relieved.

Faith's amusement tapered off soon enough, although the grin wouldn't go away. _It's got to be something in the sandwiches._ "So how did this whole kinky link thing get going?" she asked.

Richard shifted around in his chair. "She and I... we're less linked to each other, than each of us to someone else."

Faith's good mood vanished. If Richard and Anita were linked up to the same person, that could only mean... "Jean-Claude."

"Yes." Something surfaced in Richard's eyes. Something deep and dark, something previously hidden. Faith suddenly realized that while Richard wasn't a vampire, he wasn't quite as human as he pretended.

Faith swallowed hard, willing her stomach to digest faster in case she needed to fight. If Richard had wanted to attack her, he could have done so already. Right? Besides, she'd taken on lycanthropes before.

Maybe he sensed her sudden revelation. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise," he said.

"Really?" Faith raised her eyebrows, dubious. "Why should I believe you?"

"I wouldn't do that," he replied, sounding slightly offended.

Faith just kept looking at him.

"And Anita would get pissed at me if I attacked you with no reason," he grudgingly added.

"Damned straight."

Richard put his hands up, as if signalling a surrender. "Look, I'm sorry, but I thought you needed to know about the kiss thing."

Faith was about to tell him to get over himself, but then she reconsidered. Did it matter that she knew what had really gone on? Was it better that she knew she'd kissed Richard, even metaphysically?

Yeah, it did. It made Faith think better of Richard, that he'd thought to tell her the truth, and that he thought she had a right to know. She hadn't had a lot of guys in her life treat her like she was good people. Robin had been the first guy to treat her right, like a lady. It was a good feeling.

"Thanks," Faith said.

Richard smiled at that, another breathtaking smile. Even though Faith was exhausted and bruised, her whole body reacted to that smile.

"I should get back," he said. "I'm sure Jean-Claude's told Anita all she wants to hear by now." He stood up and let a shudder roll down his body. Faith's mind, still thinking adult thoughts, protested that she was going to let this guy just walk away. The other part of her head, the part not governed by points south, shoved those thoughts away. "Do you want me to pass on any messages?"

Faith shook her head. "I've already told Jean-Claude all I need to tonight." She stood up and pushed her chair back under the table.

"How so?" Richard asked. "I didn't know you'd talked to Jean-Claude tonight."

Faith bit her lower lip for a moment. She hadn't meant to bring that up. "Yeah, earlier, after the doctors stopped freaking out about Anita. Jean-Claude and I exchanged some words."

"What sort of words?" Richard demanded. "Did he threaten you?"

And here he was, angry on her behalf. Faith didn't understand this guy at all. "No, not that." She tugged on the hem of her sweater, to keep her hands busy. "I had something to say to him, and I said it. Then I left."

"Oh." Richard seemed to deflate a bit. "Okay, then. Is there anything you need? You or Dawn or your friend Kennedy?"

"Nah, we're good." Faith gave Richard a tremulous smile. "If you'll excuse me, there's an uncomfortable chair in the intensive care ward with my name on it."

"Good night, Faith," Richard called after her.

The way he said her name made her shiver.

* * *


	24. Chapter 24

* * *

Tap tap tap.

Willow frowned at the sound, but only sank down another inch in the uncomfortable hospital chair. "Stop it."

Tap tap tap.

"Dawn, I'm serious."

"I'm bored." Dawn continued knocking her IV tube against the edge of the bed. Tap tap tap.

Willow groaned and put her hands over her face. "You're driving me crazy."

"Yup." Dawn used her IV-free hand to push her hair back from her face, and grimaced. The doctors had let her take a quick shower, but she hadn't had a chance to wash her hair yet. It felt dirty and gross.

Just then, Faith breezed in the door, a smile on her face. "Hey, Dawn, Will, what's the bad?" she asked.

"They won't let me out," Dawn said in a voice that was perilously close to a whine. "They promised me that I could leave and now they're saying I can't."

"They said they needed to check your sodium levels or something," Willow pointed out. "They're not doing this because they're mean."

Faith took a long sip from her coffee cup. "Hey, is Buffy back yet?" she asked.

Dawn shook her head, tapping her IV tube against the bed again.

Faith put her coffee cup down on the table at the end of the bed and stretched her hands over her head. "Back to these docs. Are they going to let you go soon?"

"I hope so." Dawn struggled into a sitting position on the bed and crossed her legs under the thin sheets. "Can I have some coffee?" she asked hopefully.

"Aren't they still monitoring your fluids?" Faith asked.

Dawn frowned. She was getting grumpier and grumpier as the morning dragged on. Did that mean she was getting better? She hadn't felt grumpy the previous night. "Can I at least have a brush, then?" she asked. "My hair's a mess."

"That's for sure," Faith said.

"Faith!" Willow exclaimed as she leaned down and rummaged in her purse.

"What?" Faith asked defensively. "It's horrible."

"Don't you go have to check on Kennedy or something?" Willow asked as she handed a comb to Dawn.

"Already did that. They're going to let her out in a bit. The doctors were going on about super healing and all that crap, but I say it was her winning personality that convinced them to let her out." Faith sat onto the end of the bed as she spoke. "What's wrong, Dawn?"

Dawn held the comb gently, looking at the small plastic tines. The cuts on her palms made it hurt to hold the comb. She couldn't even close her hands. "Nothing," she lied.

She felt the bed dip as Willow sat next to her. "Here, let me," Willow said, taking the comb from Dawn's fingers. "Remember when I used to do this back in Sunnydale?"

Dawn smiled softly. "Yeah."

Faith watched them as Willow carefully untangled Dawn's hair. "How are you holding up, D?"

Faith hadn't used that nickname for her in years. "I'm okay," Dawn said carefully. _I will not admit I'm scared, won't tell either of them that I'm half convinced that this is Bolverk, back to tempt me into letting go._

"You'll let us know if there's anything you need, right?" Willow asked, pausing to untangle a knot in Dawn's hair with the comb. "Anything at all?"

"Yeah," Dawn muttered.

They were quiet while Willow continued to comb out Dawn's hair. _Mom used to do this, when I was little,_ Dawn remembered.

_But she didn't. Because I wasn't real._

It took Dawn a moment to notice the pain in her hands. Looking down, she realized that she was clenching hands into fists, fingers against the bandages on her palms.

Taking a shaking breath, she made herself relax her hands. _Even if I wasn't real then, I'm real now. My hands hurt and Willow's brushing my hair and Faith's staring at me like I'm nuts, and it's all real._

There was a noise at the door, and Dawn looked up.

A vaguely familiar guy stood there, his face almost hidden by the riotous bouquet of flowers in his hand. When she saw him, Faith twisted up off the bed.

"Umm, hi," the guy said. He lowered the flowers, and Dawn finally remembered where she'd seen him before. It was Gregory, that guy from the strip club her cousin had taken her to... what, was it only three days ago?

"Hi," Dawn said uncertainly.

He flashed a quick smile and held out the flowers. "I was visiting Anita, and heard that you were doing okay," he explained. "I wanted to bring you these."

Dawn's gaze lingered on his face for a moment, then slid down to took at the flowers. There were so many colours; purple and yellow and red and white.

"No one's brought me flowers in a long time," Dawn said softly.

"Can't see why not," Gregory said as he placed the flowers on the table at the end of the bed. "How are you?"

Dawn tried to smile, and it pulled at her split lip. "They say I'm going to be okay."

Willow shifted behind her on the bed, and Dawn suddenly remembered her manners.

"Willow, this is Gregory," Dawn said. "Gregory, Willow. And this is Faith."

The Slayer in question nodded. "Yeah, Greg and I met yesterday." She gestured with her coffee cup. "How's that thing going with your brother?"

Gregory shrugged as he put his hands in his pockets. "Okay. I'm staying at Anita's for a bit. Stephen and Vivian are back at the Circus."

Faith smiled wryly. "Did your brother figure out what Vivian wears in the end?"

Gregory chuckled. "Actually, no. Micah ended up tossing stuff in the suitcase to get his ass moving." At Faith's enquiring expression, he added, "Vivian's a wereleopard, like Micah and me, so he knows what she wears."

Dawn felt like she was missing part of the conversation, but it didn't really bother her. She looked back at the flowers for a moment.

Willow got up off the bed and went to pick up the flowers. "These are really nice," she said, handing the bouquet to Dawn. "Do you think that I should get some flowers for Kennedy?"

Faith snorted. "Trust me, Red, Kenn won't appreciate flowers in the least."

"Is Kennedy your boyfriend?" Gregory asked as he leaned against the end of the bed. Dawn buried her smile in the flowers. They smelled heavenly. _What did Heaven smell like?_ she wondered.

"No, girlfriend," Willow said automatically. Then she reddened. "Well, actually ex-girlfriend, since we're not dating any more because of school and I moved to New York and long-distance relationships don't work for anyone, especially witches and Slayers, not that there have been any other examples of that, per say."

When Willow paused to breathe, Faith said, "What the babblefish is trying to say is that that no, Kennedy is not her boyfriend."

"Cool," Gregory nodded. He looked back at Dawn and smiled at her once more. "Anita said that the demon thing was utter freaky."

A sudden chill ran through Dawn's body. She had a sudden remembrance of when she was blindfolded and tied down, of Isaac running his hand up her leg, moving the fabric of her dress aside so he could slide his fingers over her thigh. _It's over!_ she told herself. _He can't hurt me anymore, none of them can._

She didn't realize that she had crushed the flowers until Willow gently pulled the mangled stalks out of her hands. "Sorry," Dawn said softly.

"It's okay," Gregory replied. "They were dead anyway. Now they're like... I don't know, dadaist art."

It was so strange that Dawn had to ask. "How is it like dadaist art?"

Gregory shrugged. "You know. All messed up and beautiful, like a heroin heroine, wasted and frail and a day away from death but still as beautiful as ice."

Somehow, listening to him talk calmed Dawn. "Is that what you think beauty is?" Dawn asked.

The smile slowly faded off Gregory's face, and it left him looking a little more real. "I think you're beautiful," he said softly.

Dawn looked down at her palms, where spots of bright red blood were soaking through the gauze. "Do you?"

"Why would I say that if I didn't mean it?" he asked.

She didn't have an answer. _Would he lie?_ she thought. "So, um, how's Anita?" Dawn said.

Gregory pushed his curly blond hair behind his ear and sat on the edge of the bed. "She'll be okay, physically. She got fucked up pretty bad, but she always bounces back." Then he curled the corner of his lip up in an unhappy smirk. "That's another thing you and I have in common."

"What's that?" Dawn asked.

"Getting our asses saved by Anita." Gregory lifted his hand to his ear. Something about the way he moved his hand reminded Dawn of how Buffy touched her scars. "She does what she has to, but she never leaves anyone behind."

Dawn swallowed. She desperately wanted to ask him what Anita had saved him from, what big bad monster Anita had slain for him in the dark. The look in his blue eyes made her hold her tongue, apprehensive of how he might react to her words. Some part of her didn't want to scare him away.

There was a commotion at the door. One of the cops from the previous day breezed in, all dishevelled and messy.

"You're looking better," the cop said with an easy grin. Then he looked at Faith. "Richardson."

"Zerbrowski," Faith said. "Any news?"

The cop, Zerbrowski, grinned wider. "All kinds. How close are they to letting you out of here, Ms. Summers?"

"About half an hour," said the doctor who came up behind Zerbrowski. He flipped through the medical chart in his hand. "Tests are back and everything looks okay. All we need to do now is finalize your results and get your medication from the pharmacy."

"Really?" Dawn asked, almost afraid to get her hopes up.

"Really," the doctor said. He closed the chart and rested it against his arm. "I'd much rather prefer to release you into the custody of a family member, as opposed to letting you out on your own."

Dawn looked at Faith. "Do we know when Buffy's going to get here?" she asked.

Faith shrugged. "Do you want me to go look for her, see if she's lost?"

Dawn nodded. As Faith slipped out of the room, the doctor continued. "As I said earlier this morning, you need to keep alert to any unexplained aches and pains, especially around your kidneys. Also, try and ingest only a small amount of salt for the next few days. Got it?"

Dawn nodded again, more vigorously this time. The doctor smiled slightly.

"I'll send a nurse in to get your IV unhooked in a few minutes," he said, then left.

"Thank God," Dawn muttered.

Zerbrowski pushed his glasses back up his nose. "This is good. When you get sprung, can you head on down to Anita's room? We can have a post-demon conference without me running back and forth between rooms."

"Isn't Anita being released any time soon?" Dawn ran her fingers over the back of her IV tube, a tiny bubble of guilt gurgling in her stomach.

"I think her doctor said not until tonight," Gregory explained as he pulled his knees up to his chest, making himself quite comfortable on her bed. "Something about the head injury and the clotting and stuff."

Zerbrowski raised an eyebrow, but wisely let it go. "Why don't you guys come down to Anita's when Dawn's released, and we'll talk?

Willow sat down in her chair by the bed again. "Sure thing, Sergeant."

The room was quiet after Zerbrowski left. Dawn dropped her head and let her hair hang down in a curtain on either side of her face.

"So did you see the creepy demon thing?" Gregory asked.

"Yeah." Dawn didn't look up.

"What did it look like?" he pushed. "Tall? Short? Covered in marshmallow?"

Again, it was such a strange thing to say that Dawn almost smiled. "What do you mean, covered in marshmallow?"

"You know, like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man." Gregory's face was solemn, but his eyes were laughing at Dawn. Remarkably, she didn't care.

"It wasn't the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man," Dawn told him. She sat up a bit straighter. "The demon, Bolverk--"

"Bolverk?" Gregory interrupted. "Are you sure?"

"Um, I think so." Dawn looked at Willow, who nodded in confirmation. "Why?"

Gregory waved his hand. "Just checking. So, you were saying?"

Dawn absently touched the edge of the gauze on her hand. "So there's Bolverk, and it's all evil, right, but totally amorphous? Then Willow here pulls it into being."

"Then what?" Gregory asked.

Dawn tried to remember what it looked like. She had been so busy trying to pull her chains out of the floor it was a bit difficult. "It was tall, really tall. Nine, maybe ten feet tall. All black and scaly, with these foot-long spikes everywhere."

A visible shudder ran down Gregory's body. "And it was trying to kill you?" he asked.

Dawn licked her lips. She wished Faith hadn't taken her coffee with her. "Yes and no."

"What Dawn's trying to say is that it wanted her to do something, and when she refused to go uber-evil, it tried to kill her," Willow interjected.

Gregory's expression was eloquent. "And you fought it off?" he asked, breathless. "Then Anita was right about you."

"What did Anita say about me?" Dawn leaned forward, her hands balled loosely in her lap.

Gregory slid his legs down until he was sitting cross-legged. "That you had to be really, really strong to come out of this in one piece. And smart, too, to know so much about the demons."

"She told you that? About me?"

"Sort of. Actually, she told Richard and I was in the room and heard her. But she said it this very morning."

Dawn smoothed the blanket over her lap before looking up at Gregory. "She thought I was strong?"

There was movement by the door. "Summers woman, through and through," Buffy said as she came into the room with Faith. Buffy smiled, although it looked as if it cost her something. _She's so tired_ , Dawn thought.

"I learned from the best," Dawn said, returning the smile. She hadn't realized how much she missed Buffy until just then.

Buffy came over to the bed and gave Dawn a brief hug. "You're looking good. Except for the hair."

Dawn made a face. "We so need to work on your bedside manner."

Buffy smiled again and stood up. Gregory tracked her, but other than his eyes, he was frozen on the bed. _Can he sense her Slayerness?_ Dawn wondered. _Or did Anita tell him who my sister was?_

"Buffy, this is Gregory. He came to say hi," Dawn said by way of introduction. "This is my sister, Buffy."

Gregory nodded in greeting, but he seemed to relax slightly. Buffy was giving Dawn a look, and Dawn chose to ignore it.

Buffy opened her mouth, but a nurse breezed into the room just then. "Dawn Summers?" She didn't wait until Dawn nodded before coming around to the side of the bed. "I'm here to get you ready for discharge."

The nurse was reaching for Dawn's IV when she spotted Gregory. Something about her expression became a bit ugly.

"You have to leave," she said abruptly to Gregory. "We let you in because of that woman, but you can't be running around where all these wounded people are, it's not safe."

Dawn was confused, and it only got worse when Gregory slid off the bed. "Wait, what are you talking about?"

"She's talking about how Greg here gets furry once a month," Faith said coldly, crossing her arms over her chest. Willow also stood up, hands at her sides.

The nurse pinched her lips together. "It's not safe," she insisted.

Not safe? What kind of stupid comment was that? Gregory had been perfectly fine. Hell, even Faith seemed to like him, and Faith didn't really like anyone to start. "Yeah, well, I want him here," Dawn burst out. "He's my friend."

"Your friend," the nurse repeated blankly.

"Yes, my friend," Dawn insisted. "A close, personal friend of mine, and since I'm the wounded Nellie here, I should get to say who stays."

"A friend?" the nurse loaded the word with sarcasm. Buffy made a small movement, but Dawn beat her to the reaction.

"Yes, a friend!" Dawn exclaimed. "Just because you have a problem with lycanthropes, don't go picking on my friends."

Buffy turned to the nurse, crossing her arms over her chest in an echo of Faith's stance. "I think you should send in another nurse," she said.

Colour high in her cheeks, the nurse turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.

Dawn let out her breath in a hiss. "I hate people like that!"

"You and me both," Buffy said, sitting down on the edge of the bed with a bounce. "Why do some people need to paint all the lycanthropes in this world with the same brush?"

Willow sat on the edge of her chair, lips white. "Fear." Her voice shook only a little, but Dawn knew the red-headed witch was very, very angry. "Paint one group of people with the same brush and soon you don't even think about what you're doing."

Gregory edged back over to the foot of the bed. His shoulders were hunched forward, nervous. "Thanks," he murmured as he rubbed his hands over his arms.

Wondering if she couldn't just pull the IV needle out on her own, Dawn said, "Do you get that a lot?"

Gregory twitched his shoulders, not really looking up. "Sort of. Being out as a wereleopard isn't exactly the easiest thing in this town." Carefully, he met Dawn's eyes. She was a bit surprised to see the look in his eyes. He looked almost hungry. Not stomach hungry, but like he wanted something. "But close personal friend?"

Dawn felt a small rush of warmth to her cheeks. "You did sort of offer to let me watch you take off your clothes," she shot back.

Faith laughed, while Buffy let out a tiny squeak. "What?"

In spite of all the pain and trauma she had been through in the past few days, Dawn couldn't help it. She started giggling.

* * *

The doctor had insisted that Dawn ride in a wheelchair until she left the hospital, and Gregory insisted on pushing. He was good at it, too, Dawn thought, not taking the corners too fast. He also knew his way to Anita's room.

Willow, Faith and Buffy trailed along behind the wheelchair, making it impossible for Dawn to talk to Buffy about West Virginia and why she looked so tired. _After Anita, I'll ask Buffy what's going on,_ Dawn promised herself.

Gregory carefully took another corner. Peripherally, Dawn saw two men standing down at the end of the hall in the waiting area, but it was a hospital; there were always people waiting in the intensive care ward. She dismissed the thought as Gregory steered her wheelchair through an open door. Anita was lying on her side, a blue-haired man draped over her feet at the end of the bed and another tall man in a chair by the bed.

There was also someone else in the room, the tallest woman Dawn had ever seen. Everything about her just shouted 'bodyguard.' Well, that or 'Amazon'.

The Amazon stood by the wall, giving Dawn a serious look. Dawn smiled weakly at her as Gregory shoved the wheelchair right up against the bed.

Anita stared blankly at Dawn, but her eyes were slightly warmer. "You're looking good," Anita said weakly.

Should she apologize? Dawn folded her hands in her lap, vaguely aware that Gregory had sat down on the end of the bed next to the blue-haired man. "They let me out," Dawn finally said. "How are you doing? How's your head?"

Anita sighed and looked up at the man in the chair next to the bed. He reached over and gently squeezed Anita's hand. "She's going to be just fine," the man said. "They want to keep her until tonight for observation."

"Oh, good," Dawn said in a heartfelt rush. "I was all worried, what with you being all hurt and all weak and Gregory said you got messed up pretty good--"

Anita sat straight up in bed, glaring daggers at the blond wereleopard on the end of the bed. "Gregory!"

Gregory cowered slightly against the blue-haired man. "Well, you were!" he protested.

The tall man by the bed put his hand on Anita's shoulder. "Anita, you shouldn't be getting excited..."

His voice trailed off when Anita turned her glare on him. "Can it, Richard," she ordered before turning back on Dawn.

Dawn found herself having to raise her hand to her face to hide the small smile off her face. "I see that the reports of your demise have been greatly exaggerated, then."

Anita shook her head. "So it seems."

Just as Dawn realized that Buffy, Willow and Faith hadn't come into Anita's room with her, the latter two chose that moment to slip in the door.

"I'm telling you, Red--" Faith came to a halt when she saw the bodyguard leaning up against the wall.

The woman stepped away from the wall, her hands at her sides, staring Faith down.

"Claudia, it's okay," Anita said quickly, "This is Faith, she's with the cops."

Claudia looked at Faith with cool suspicion. "I heard she got into a fight with the Master at the Circus yesterday morning," Claudia said.

"You got into a fight with a vampire, Faith?" Dawn exclaimed. "With Jean-Claude? Dark hair and froufy shirts Jean-Claude?"

Faith held out her hands. "It wasn't really a fight," she tried to explain.

"Jason told me that you almost knocked Jean-Claude's head off before he threw you across the ring," the blue-haired man said.

"Zane, shut up," Anita said wearily. Then, "Claudia, it's fine. Please."

Warily, Claudia stepped back against the wall, holding her wrist with her other hand in classic bodyguard style and keeping her eyes trained on Faith.

Willow edged over and put her hand on Dawn's shoulder. "Sergeant Zerbrowski said that he would be down in a few minutes to talk to us," Willow told Anita.

"Wonderful," Anita grumbled. She rubbed her forehead for a moment, then looked back up at Dawn with cool eyes. "So you thought it might be a zombie demon after us animators and didn't think to mention this to anyone?" she asked bluntly.

Dawn sat straight up in her wheelchair, ignoring the aches in her lower back. "How did you know about that?"

Anita's eyes narrowed. Dawn knew that look. A lot of the Slayers got it when they were pissed. "I asked first."

Willow squeezed Dawn's shoulder. "We had to read your journals, when we found out you were missing," Willow explained.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Anita insisted, leaning forward. As she moved, a wire that ran from a machine at the side of the bed under her hospital gown stretched out. Richard slipped up on to the bed and tried to get Anita to lean back, but she shrugged him off. "I had a friend who almost got eaten by this monster," Anita continued, her voice starting to rise. "And you could have died, with all what happened!"

"I know that!" Dawn exclaimed. "And I was going to tell you, as soon as I got a bit more information!"

"So it's my fault that you got kidnapped?" Anita demanded.

"I never said that!" Dawn almost shouted. "This wasn't your fault and it wasn't mine!"

Richard pulled Anita back onto the pillows on the bed, and this time she let him. Zane slipped up the side of the bed until his head was resting by Anita's leg. Anita looked down at Zane, and rubbed his cheek with her hand. Her tension slowly changed into tiredness.

"What would you have done if I came in and said that I thought it was a demon?" Dawn asked, quieter. "Most of the time, no one wants to hear it. I didn't even have any proof."

"I would have listened," Anita insisted.

"You would have thought I was nuts," Dawn contradicted. "That the secretary was having delusions of grandeur or something. Besides, I didn't have the research I needed from Willow and Giles."

Anita looked down at her knees. If Dawn hadn't known better than to suggest such a thing, she would have said that the necromancer was pouting.

"And even if I had talked to you, it wouldn't have made any difference," Dawn said. "We wouldn't have known that Bolverk had killed Francois, or that Bolverk was going to get out that night."

Willow squeezed Dawn's shoulder again, and Dawn leaned into the contact.

After a moment, Anita lifted her gaze from her knees to the large window in the room.

Taking a deep breath, Dawn said the thing she had been practicing in her head for the better part of the last few hours. "Thank you."

Anita's head whipped around in a way that couldn't have been good for her head injury. "What are you talking about?"

"For saving my life," Dawn said.

Anita shrugged, looking exceedingly uncomfortable. "It's what I do," she said.

"Anita," Richard chastised. He gave her a serious look.

After a moment of Anita and Richard staring meaningfully at each other, Anita turned back to Dawn. "You're welcome," she said, softly.

Well, that went a whole lot better than she had anticipated. Dawn turned her head, looking for Buffy, but she wasn't there. Dawn frowned. "What happened to Buffy?"

"An excellent question," Faith said, a slightly annoyed tone in her voice.

Before Dawn could ask Faith what she meant, Buffy walked into the room. On her heels was Zerbrowski.

"Good, the gang's all here," Zerbrowski said before Dawn had a chance to ask Buffy where she had been. "And four bodyguards, Anita?"

"One bodyguard," Anita snapped. "You know Claudia. Gregory and Zane came by to make sure I was okay."

"And Mr. Zeeman?" Zerbrowski made his way through the rather crowded room to lean on the wall opposite the door.

"What about Richard?" Anita asked, her voice getting just a bit dangerous.

Zerbrowski raised his eyebrows. "Not everyone's ex-finace would rush to their bedside after they were wounded in the line of duty," he pointed out.

"Micah couldn't make it, so he asked me if I could stay," Richard said, but there was a slight tension in his shoulders as he leaned closer to Anita.

Zerbrowski's eyebrows went up even farther. "Micah couldn't make it?" His eyes rested briefly on Zane and Gregory, curled up on the bed, before going back to Anita. "I notice Nathaniel's not here."

Anita opened her mouth to say something, but Faith beat her to it. "Much as I like a game of 'tease Anita about her boyfriends', Zerbrowski, aren't there more pressing matters to talk about?"

Zerbrowski nodded. "Truer words, et cetera," he said. He stood off the wall, and Dawn caught a glimpse of glee in his eyes. What was that about? "We got them."

Even through the resultant clamour, Dawn knew exactly who he meant. James. They had James, and he wasn't a threat anymore, he couldn't raise any more demons to get her.

The world was getting a bit fuzzy, and Dawn suddenly felt light-headed. Then there were strong hands on her arms, shaking her lightly. "Dawn!" Buffy's voice. "Dawn, look at me!"

Dawn tried to focus, and after a moment, Buffy's face came into view. She was kneeling on the ground in front of Dawn's wheelchair, holding Dawn's arms.

"You were hyperventilating," Buffy said. "You okay now?"

Dawn took a deep breath and it shredded her irrational panic. "I'm good."

Buffy, so somber, got up and pressed her forehead against Dawn's for a moment before she moved to stand next to Willow.

Now Dawn was feeling quite embarrassed, but Zerbrowski started talking again. "They're both in custody, James and this Mary. Only her name wasn't Mary, it was Jane. Jane Todd. Local con artist. We picked her up at three this morning and she's been spilling her guts ever since."

"How did you find them?" Anita demanded.

Zerbrowski's expression was suddenly colder, more cop-like. The joker was gone. "I was hoping you could tell me."

"Tell you what?" Anita asked, looking honestly confused.

"We got two phone calls last night, anonymous," Zerbrowski said. "The first we traced to a payphone out by the Church of Eternal Life, telling us where 'Mary' was. The next was to let us know we should pick up a car parked on the side of the freeway. Seems James was all tied up with silver chains in the back of his own car. Someone had yanked the emergency exit tab out of the trunk. Someone strong."

Anita closed her eyes for a movement. "Just because they were tied up with silver chains, Zerbrowski, doesn't mean that I know who it was."

"How many people in this town have silver chains, Anita?" Zerbrowski asked.

Zane and Gregory shared a look. "You'd be surprised, sergeant," Zane said.

Zerbrowski looked as if he was going to ask a question, but then shook his head and continued. "Smith tells me that Jean-Claude was here all night?"

"He was," Richard said quickly. "He left only half an hour before dawn."

"Does it matter who got the guy as long as he's stashed away deep in a jail cell?" Buffy interjected. "What exactly are you going to do with the guy who hurt my sister?"

Zerbrowski tried to adjust his tie, and only made it hang worse. "The guys at the station can't tell if James is magical or not, and Dolph's vetoed asking Tammy to come in and check. We've got one of the FBI's experts flying in to check. In the meantime, we're not taking any chances. There's still a question of whether he's responsible for Isaac's death, the DA's office is fighting about that one, but we've got him for the kidnapping and murder of Francois Duraey, and for Dawn's kidnapping, plus assault on a federal officer."

"Who?" Anita asked.

Zerbrowski frowned. "How hard were you hit?" he asked. "I'm talking about you, Marshal Blake."

"Oh."

Even thought she was trying to fight it, Dawn was shaking. Not a lot, just tiny tremors in her hands. Gregory, who was close to her, carefully put his hand on her arm, and the warmth in his hand spread up her arm, calming her.

"He fought."

"Pardon, Dawn?" Zerbrowski asked.

Dawn swallowed, trying to remember what James had told her. "Francois. He fought Bolverk. That was why the zombies tried to get away on those nights, Francois was trying to get help. That's what they said."

Anita let out a sigh. "Poor kid," she said, even though Dawn knew that Francois was a year older than Anita. "I'll tell John, he'd want to know."

Dawn nodded. "Good. It's just easy to forget how hard it is to fight, when you know you're going to die."

She looked at Buffy as she said it, remembering again how she felt when Buffy turned from her, on Glory's tower, and ran to her death. Had Buffy been sad to die? Happy that the fight was over? Dawn had never been brave enough to ask.

Buffy smiled weakly at Dawn, but it never reached her eyes.

"Is there anything else?" Anita asked.

"Not really," Zerbrowski said. "Dawn, can you come into the station tomorrow and answer a few more questions?"

"Sure," Dawn said. "Tomorrow's Monday, right?" She waited for Zerbrowski to nod. "Then can it be after six? I have to work until five."

"Work?" Faith exclaimed. "The same job that got you in this mess in the first place?"

Willow started talking to Faith, and Gregory and Zane began to talk to each other, and Zerbrowski began to chuckle. Dawn looked at Anita, and was surprised to see the understanding expression on her face.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Dawn?" Buffy asked. "You're still injured."

"What am I going to do, sit around like some little victim?" Dawn asked. "I'm fine. I'm not really hurt. Besides, work helps me deal. It always has. You know that, Buffy."

Faith snorted. "She really is just like you, B."

Still chuckling, Zerbrowski headed for the door. "I'll see you tomorrow, then, Dawn."

"Thanks, sergeant," Dawn called after him. He gave her a wave, then vanished out the door.

When Dawn turned back around, she saw that Richard was staring at Faith. "Was that what you talked to Jean-Claude about last night?" he asked, his voice low.

"Faith, what..." Willow began, but Faith cut her off.

"All I said was that we weren't leaving town until these guys were caught," Faith said.

Whatever Anita was about to say, was interrupted as Kennedy strode in the door.

Dawn spared a glance up at Willow, who was suddenly beaming.

"I see they let you out," Faith said.

Kennedy stuck her thumbs in her jeans pockets. "Finally," she said to Faith, while looking Claudia up and down. "Everything okay here?"

"Yeah, it's cool," Faith said, and Kennedy relaxed a fraction and broke eye contact with Claudia to glance over at Dawn.

"See you're okay," Kennedy said. Dawn nodded, and that was that.

"So, I'll see you at work tomorrow?" Anita said to Dawn.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Richard asked, worry crossing his face.

"I'm going to be fine," Anita said crossly.

"You do seem a bit grumpy," Gregory observed.

Zane grinned, flashing a set of very not-human cat fangs. "So she's back to normal."

Anita glared at them both, until they ducked their heads and stared at the bed, although Dawn could see that Gregory was still smirking.

Then Anita shifted her gaze to Dawn. "If you hadn't done the research on this thing, we never would have found you in time," she said.

"That's what Dawn does," Willow said with a tiny bit of pride in her voice. "Demons, baddies, all kinds, she can dig up any information on them."

The corner of Anita's mouth twitched in what looked like the beginning of a smile. "And Faith, Kennedy, thanks. I mean it."

Kennedy nodded, while Faith winked at Anita. "Yeah, well, the job needs to be done, no matter sleet or snow."

"That's the post office, Faith," Dawn pointed out.

Faith frowned at her. "I always get my man?"

"That's the Mounties," Buffy supplied.

A nurse came into the room, wheeling a little tray. She tisked when she saw the crowed. "Marshal Blake, you were told to rest."

"I am resting," Anita said pointedly.

The nurse looked skeptical. "Either way, it's time for me to check your vitals."

Buffy moved behind Dawn's wheelchair. "That's our cue to leave," she said.

Dawn gave Anita another quick smile. "See you tomorrow."

Anita spared her a quick nod, then began to argue with the nurse.

Just before they left the room, Dawn caught Richard smiling at Faith, and Faith giving him a wink. _What was that all about?_ Dawn wondered. _I'm missing all the gossip._

Out in the hallway, Willow stopped and put a hand to her forehead. Kennedy put her hand on Willow's back. "You okay?" Kennedy asked.

Willow took a deep breath. "Yeah. I'm just a bit sleepy. And hungry. And I think I want a bath."

"Ditto," Faith pushed her hair back. "Hey, Red, why don't you, me and Kenn here go get stuffed on bagels and OJ?" She stopped and frowned, reviewing her words. "Or maybe stuff ourselves on bagels and orange juice?"

Willow nodded. "Buffy, what are you and Dawn going to do?"

Buffy leaned on the handles of the wheelchair. "Aunt Karen's coming to get Dawn in a few minutes, I talked to her this morning. I'm going to head out with them, quality family time and stuff. Catch you guys tonight? We can do the big Scoobie dinner."

"Oh, can we go to a steakhouse again and freak out the waiters by ordering a whole cow?" Faith asked. "I always like doing that."

"What do you think, Dawn?" Buffy asked.

Dawn looked at her friends, then her sister, and smiled. "Yeah, that sounds great."

Willow gave Dawn a fragile hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'm glad you're okay," she whispered.

Dawn suddenly had to blink back tears. "And I'm glad you're okay," she whispered back.

Buffy and Dawn watched as the three women walked down the hall. If Kennedy was a bit slower than normal, and Willow's steps dragged, neither Buffy or Dawn mentioned it.

"Buffy?"

"Yes?"

"How are you, really?"

Dawn heard her sister sigh, a sad sound she made so often when she thought no one was around. "I'm... I'm going to be okay. I have to be."

 _I have to be._ Dawn looked down at her hands, which the second nurse had re-bandaged before they let her leave. "I'm glad you're here."

She felt Buffy's hand, cool against her cheek, and she leaned into the touch. "I'm glad I'm here, too."

Buffy began to wheel Dawn toward the elevator, which would take them to where Aunt Karen was going to meet them.

"You did good, Dawn," Buffy said after a minute. "I knew you would."

Dawn twisted around and looked up at her sister. "I learned from the best, you know."

She was still smiling as Buffy wheeled her onto the elevator, one step closer to going home.

* * *


	25. Chapter 25

* * *

Dawn fumbled with the door to the Animators Inc. office, managing to turn the knob on the second try. Craig looked up from the computer as she entered the office, smiling at her.

"Hey, we heard you were okay," he said, stand up and coming around the edge of the desk. "How do you feel?"

Dawn smiled back. "I've been better, but I've also been worse." She dropped her purse onto one of the client chairs. "I'm good enough to go back to work, even."

Craig hesitated. "Are you? I mean, it's eight and I should bail, but do you want me to wait with you until someone else gets here?"

Dawn made herself keep smiling. "No, it's okay. Really," she added when Craig just stood there. "Go. It's fine."

The door opened again and Anita shuffled into the office. She winced at the bright overhead lights. "Morning."

"Are you sure you're supposed to be here?" Dawn asked, her eyebrows going up. "You look like crap."

Anita pushed her hair back from her face. "Right back at you," she snapped.

Behind Dawn, Craig made a noise in his throat. "She's back to normal," he mumbled.

Anita glared. "Goodbye, Craig."

"Right." Craig gave Dawn one last look. "It's good that you're back."

Anita leaned against the secretary's desk as Craig walked out of the office. In the stillness, Dawn thought she could almost hear Anita's breathing. "Did they really let you out of the hospital?" Dawn asked.

The corner of Anita's mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. "No, I knotted some sheets together, went over the wall at sunrise. Of course they let me out. Although I'd almost rather be in the hospital," she grumbled.

"Why? Are you feeling bad?" Dawn asked. She'd had to deal with enough Slayers to know when someone was hiding the pain, but Anita wasn't acting quite like that.

"No." Anita crossed her arms over her chest. She looked weary. "I'm just tripping over guys trying to make sure I'm okay. It's a bit..."

"Suffocating?" Dawn suggested.

Anita looked at Dawn, and nodded. "You sound like you've done this before."

"Well, I am the kidnap queen back home."

"None of that was in the police files," Anita said. Her voice was soft, but Dawn went still.

"A lot of that was before Addison and Clark."

"Vampires?"

Anita's eyes were bright with curiosity and something else, something a little less innocent. Dawn was careful as she shook her head and said, "All sorts of things. All solved in the end."

"Uh huh." Anita let her eyes linger on Dawn's face for just a moment, then looked down at the desk. "Actually, I came in to see what mess Bert's made of my schedule. Zane said the thing yesterday was in the paper. That always means more phone calls and more thrill-seekers."

"Fun." Dawn opened the appointment book, and winced when she saw the marks under Anita's name. "Why don't I bring the files in to you?"

Anita swore under her breath. "Fine, you do that." She muttered to herself all the way down the hall.

Dawn seated herself and began to pull all of Anita's case files together. She had almost finished the task when Bert walked into the lobby. He stopped dead when he saw Dawn sitting at the desk.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Um, filing?" Dawn offered.

"After what happened?"

Dawn opened her mouth to respond, but Anita came storming out of her office. "Oh, no you don't," she said fiercely.

"Don't what?" Bert turned to face Anita. He towered over her, but of the two, Dawn would lay her money on Anita any day.

"Don't you dare start on Dawn."

"But she wasn't here on Friday."

"She was tied up," Anita snapped. "Big bad guys, tried to get a demon to eat Larry?" She glared up at Bert. "And it was all because of this job! They never would have come after her if not for this job! You should consider yourself lucky if she doesn't sue for hazardous working conditions!"

Bert paled, took one look at Dawn sitting innocently at her desk, then slunk off to his office. The door closed carefully behind him.

"Hazardous working conditions?" Dawn asked.

Anita raised her eyebrows. "It got him to shut up, didn't it?"

Dawn grinned, then pushed a stack of folders at Anita. "Here. Go work."

The phone rang as Anita picked up the folders. "Right," she said as she headed back for her office.

Dawn took a deep breath, then picked up the phone. "Animators Inc., how can I help you?"

_-the end_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I started this back in 2004 as a way to get a better handle on the character of Dawn, and well there you go. This story was my first real foray into an action-adventure. 
> 
> Also ten years ago is a long time, and there were times in reading this story that i had to shake my head at the melodrama and angst. Oh well we all grow as writers over a decade, y/y? I still love this story. Bolverk was particularly fun to create.


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